Screen vs Print Document Design

Source: Muslima.com

Seeing is believing and therefore the presentation of a document is very important and it reflect on the issues of the design concept and the publishing. A good design is very subjective because each of the design is presented in a different way based on designer’s concept and creativity.

Reep (2006) defined, design features build up reader’s interest by keeping them focused on the information required. Due to that, majority of the readers prefer to read a document on a digital version compared to printed document.

Source: Smashing Magazine.com

Referring to Walsh (2006), words that were form into sentences is a print construct text. Whatever images and text that appear on any devices are multimodal text. As the world moving forward, it has changed the way of the document been viewed. With the print document, readers are required to flip or turn the page whereby the online document let the readers or the viewers to leave their comment or feedback. 

Besides that, the layout plays an important role on any print document design as mention by Hilligoss (2002). She mention that any layout design should  comes in three different alignment where the left side of the document represent the objective and the right side are mainly for some of info revealing  for the documents. Meanwhile the center part is normally for invitations purposes.

Source: Create Blog.com

Both online and print document design contains information but online version contains a greater visual interaction than printed one. A weblog consists of images that moving around and there are also interactive buttons for user to choose what they want to view. Reading is a complex activity that builds by layers of information (Hilligoss, 2002). There is a new way of sharing for online documents called ‘hypertext’ as mention by Benetos K. (2005). Hypertext are better presented by few types of written text like the yellow pages or white pages which contains all the telephone numbers and addresses. 

Source: ProBlogger

However, many have suggested the used of online media compared to print document because they believe that the online media will wipe out the newspaper business. Due to that, I do not believe that the printed document will be obsolete and I never support. As Nielsen (1999) said, print document design is based on allowing the eyes through the document while the web functions by letting hands move the information.

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REFERENCES

• Benetos K 2005, ‘Design Consideration When Writing : Print Vs Screen’, TECFA, viewed 11th April 2012, < http://tecfa.unige.ch/staf/staf-k/benetos/staf13/per5/lire.html >
• Hilligoss, Susan & Howard, Tharon 2002, 'Visual Communication - A Writer's Guide' Second Edition,[ONLINE] viewed 11th April 2012, http://www.ablongman.com/mycomplab_content/pdf/long_hilligoss.pdf
  
• Nielsen, J., 1999, Differences between print design and web design, viewed 11 April 2012, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>
•  Reep, Diana C 2006, Technical Writing, Longman, New York
• Walsh, M 2006, 'The ‘textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,' Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37. 

New Forms of Media Publishing

Source: Facebook.com

The upcoming of new media publishing is at the digital era due to the technology advancement. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and online news are among the famous networking sites. Thus the traditional way of media publication is making its way down. News is accessible in various ways depending on the devices we are using.

Source: TwitterJournalism.com

Walsh (2006) stated that multimodal text has gained a greater number of readers compare to printed material like newspaper and book because it comes with animation and sound to attract and entertain the readers and its has taken a new definition in the context of  online circulation. Twitter is a social networking that has proven as one of most powerful and effective form of media. 

Source: Twitter.com

Due to that, twitterjournalism.com has finally launched and Twitter has proved that the traditional journalism can be challenged. Even though a user can only update their status up to 140 characters, they still pass on the text even its only consists of three lines of text.

Source: Smashing Magazine.com

Besides that, the layout plays an important role on any print document design as mention by Hilligoss (2002). She mention that layout design should  comes in three different alignment where the left side of the document represent the objective and the right side are mainly for some of info revealing  for the documents. Meanwhile the center part is more for a formal format normally for invitations purposes. Salience can be achieved by the balanced in layout design as the images shown.

If we look at the design, we can actually understand the function and the position of the images and text. As Kress & van Leeuwen (1998, p.201) emphasize that a lot of balanced can be achieve by the elements of the visual height in the layout. 

Source: Bursa Malaysia.com

Source: Chatango

There are new forms of visual and text such as Live Group Chatbox, and RSS Feeds. Kress & van Leeuwen (1998, p.187) further explain that pictures and visuals are supported by text for further explanation and elaboration of the fundamental relations and it also show how new form of media have move forward and the importance of design principle and multimodality.

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REFERENCES 

• Hilligoss, Susan & Howard, Tharon 2002, 'Visual Communication - A Writer's Guide' Second Edition,[ONLINE] viewed 12th April 2012, http://www.ablongman.com/mycomplab_content/pdf/long_hilligoss.pdf
  
• Kress G and van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd Edition, Routledge, New York, USA.
• Walsh, M 2006, 'The ‘textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,' Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.