Comments on: How Web Design Has Changed Print

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:19:29 +0000

Tisk tisk Damien. I believe Tony is simply saying that the implication of “Print design has evolved a great deal thanks to web design” is totally absurd. I agree. If a web designer doesn’t draw upon the visual guidelines established by decades of print communication, they cannot be considered a competent web designer. Is a web page not a page with text and imagery like a printed page? Of course it is. The only difference is one is reflective and one is transmissive. You need more education boy! :P

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:20:30 +0000

yea…correction, i’m sure that print and web both influence each other today in plenty of ways but things like navigational tools and bold color schemes like you mentioned have been explored beautifully long before anything digital came into existence through out major art movements in history. I thought this was more or less common sense…

By: Betsy Arvelo

Betsy Arvelo — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 13:01:46 +0000

I have been a designer for 40 years. I started in print, of course, and embraced the Web in 1994. I got my first Mac in 1987. My first Adobe product: Illustrator 88. I have taught Photoshop and beta tested for Adobe on several occasions. I have seen the industry change and, although it is true that Web has influenced Print in a few ways, almost all Web design is based on design concepts used in print for many years. I was doing shadows for print in Photoshop, with channels, for a long time before they included the shadow filters and shadows went viral. The Web is lacking quite a bit from print that it could benefit from, such as, the ability to work with text the way you can in print. We are getting closer everyday with cascading styles, and Web fonts, but we are still not anywhere near where design needs to be on the Web. Don’t get me wrong, there are wonderful designs, beautiful pages on the Web where I find a lot of inspiration, but most of them are still done with graphics and not real content. (Very sad about FLASH too, there were some amazing things done with that.) Unfortunately, the majority of the content online has been done by lay people with no knowledge of any design principles and are just plain awful. And now with all the WordPress and Joomla templates–and add your text here–the Web is starting to become very homogenized…everything looks the same. You can recognize the templates that everyone is using. This is also transferring to print and people are “designing” their own ads, business cards, etc… Yikes!

By: Tristan Sands

Tristan Sands — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:58:20 +0000

Shades of that large subclass of bad coders that think they are design gurus, yet feel the need blog about designers being nothing but plagiarizers and propeller-heads. The last 10 years I’ve searched in vain for a good coder I can partner with! I look forward to the likes of Adobe Muse forcing them out of business and encouraging good coders and good designers to work together, ignoring this imaginary wall created between web and print.

Why do these ‘us and them’ articles need to be written? Judging from the response it seems to fuel a war that shouldn’t be!

By: Andrea Russell

Andrea Russell — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 02:43:24 +0000

With two-year technical degrees relacing four year art school degrees, it’s no wonder that designers possess little to no art training. Without a doubt, Carrie has touched a nerve, but the real problem lies with using graphic design as a buzz word just to fill seats in poorly structured associate degree programs. Certainly as designers, with years of training,in art school and experience,in the field,to see what is becoming of the industry must be concerning. To Carrie’s credit, she has made observations that differences do exist between print and web design. However the particular examples weaken her position. Whatever the reason, print design has always reflected a limited use of type and color, irregardless of web design. Art school drilled that into our heads. Line, shape, space, color, texture, limit your palette, avoid dead space, integrate the elements to create a unified piece, direct the eye with the composition-Let’s give credit for what web design taught us: to manipulate software and to make the files smaller.

By: Robert Shepherd

Robert Shepherd — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:03:07 +0000

Carrie,

Thank you for taking the time and presenting your article. I know it’s tough to present ideas to a potentially huge audience in a format that allows them to respond so publicly.

In the end, I feel very strongly about the mis-perceptions presented in your article. You make the same mistakes that so many blog writers make in that you present an opinion piece as an authoritative one. Some of your summations are just flat out wrong and there’s no verifiable data backing up any of your claims.

If you are aiming for an authoritative approach for your articles, I’d suggest research more deeply, know your topic better, validate your sources, and know your audience. Refrain what stating the obvious whenever possible too.

As a general statement, people need to remember that the web is a newer medium when compared to print and even multi-media design, but there isn’t anything revolutionary about web design that hasn’t already been established in print or multi-media.
On a positive note though, your article has brought this site to my attention and I plan to give it a once over to see if I can leverage the resources provided.

I look forward to more articles.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:27:54 +0000

I think most of the commenters your referring to could agree that this article is not fair minded or respectful to the history of the design industry and to the great graphic designers who have helped shape the industry to this day.

The early stages of web were nothing pretty, and great print design was once ALL we had, we agree on those fronts. But the author’s points of how web has influenced print have no ground to stand on. I think that is where the frustration lies. I agree some people have said some harsh things, and thats not constructive. But this article itself is a let down, and a slap in the face to a lot of great designers.

There was plenty of great design before and after desktop publishing. Desktop publishing just gave uneducated “designers” access to design tools.

Some documentaries that display greatness across years and years of design:
Art & Copy
Helvetica
Objectified

By: Patty Wisner

Patty Wisner — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:10:18 +0000

I would have to agree with Keith Draws. I find this article expressing a very naive viewpoint. I’ve been a designer for over 30 years, mostly
in print and now in increasing web work. Great design for print and web must come from a combination of natural creative gifts combined with high quality education in graphic design, the art of designing with type, negative space, color, photography and illustration built around a great conceptual idea. This author seems completely oblivious to the history of outstanding design for the last 30 years. Geez!—pick up some copies of Communication Arts Design Annuals and Print Design Annuals since the 1980′s and get an eye-full of the evolving trends in great design. Many of this author’s observations about changes between the two mediums are basically laughable—has she been living on some isolated island without media?

The late 80′s and early 90′s had gorgeous graphic design when professional typesetters were still the Gold Standard for setting type and photographers and illustrators created amazing imagery, all without computers, the mid- to late 90′s saw an explosion of collage designs on steroids when designers went overboard with Photo Shop. Desktop computers had a downside, people with zero training in typography were creating published work with egregious typographic errors, not just typos but glaring errors in just setting type correctly. I have seen these errors pop up in professional work from creative firms—their design staff too poorly trained to spot them.
Some designers trained after the mid-90′s would likely be lacking in training in what great typography should be, due to the time involved in learning creative softwares and technical knowledge for print and web. Typography education has suffered due to lack of time in design courses of study, and young designer’s teaching classes who never had proper training in typography to begin with.

I cringe when I read recent articles which now list graphic design as a good career for high school graduates who don’t want to go to college, but can get the “technical training” in a 2-year program and then learn “how to be creative” when you go to work for someone.
This is incredibly bad advice and produces untalented drones operating computers and design softwares with low quality outcomes.

Buying a stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff and a white coat doesn’t make you a doctor anymore than buying a Mac computer and Adobe Creative Suite makes you a graphic designer. Unfortunately, there are too many “weak designers” which are devaluing the professional practice of graphic design.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:35:02 +0000

Carrie, to put it bluntly; look into a History of Graphic Design class, or pick up a handful of books on the history of graphic design.

Bright color pallets, drop shadows, typefaces, and clipped images have been used in great print designs for years. Web design wasn’t always so glamourous as it is today. I can agree that both mediums are progressing together and learning from each other more everyday. Web design has and will continue to expand beyond print due to the limits and cost of printing pieces these days; and print designers will continue to push new ideas especially in advertising and packaged goods. Print and Web Designers have also been using the same tools (ie: Illustrator and Photoshop) for years. We can all thank Adobe for giving us the Creative Suite, its made creating easier for all creatives in general, but I do not see how this applies to web influencing print specifically. Its new features influencing ALL designers across the board. A great designer is eager to learn all the new functions in general.

To say that web design brought the use of all these graphic elements to the table, is an oversight of an entire history of the creative industry.

By: Melinda

Melinda — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:18:00 +0000

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I was reading this article and thinking – who is this person and where did they get their information. Are they referencing printing practices from more than 20 years ago when most stuff was set by hand and limited to the font choices on hand? I have been in the industry for more than 15 years and I have had the pleasure of watching our profession grow to incorporate BOTH web and print applications. But to be honest I have been applying soft drop shadows and line art silhouettes for years and to say that print was limited by font use and colour is complete crap (sorry to be so harsh). In the past before digital print became so widely used most design was kept simple (i.e. 1-3 colour choices) not always because the designer didn’t know how to design with multiple colours it was mainly because it wasn’t always cost effective for the client or the actual design benefited from the limited colour options because it is what got the message across. Just because you have access to millions of colours doesn’t mean you have to use millions of colours – that is what makes what we do art. Not to mention full colour printing in the past was very expensive but since digital printing has become so readily available and main stream print designers have finally been able to let their imaginations fly with how ever many colours we wish to use. But again digital print has its limitations, like offset print does, and like web design does but as designers we design around those limitations that technology presents. What I didn’t appreciate about this article is that it felt like it was saying web design is more cutting edge an innovative than print – when I think the reverse is truer. Web design allows for so many colours because computer monitors evolved to include millions of colours (remember the days of 256 colour monitors) and allowed our clients to used a rainbow of colours without any extra cost. The only reason web design has been able to incorporate the same level of font usage print has been using for many, many years is because the software they use has allowed for it (remember when everything was set to the 8 primary fonts). So in my opinion I would equate the fact that print designers are using more colour in their pieces to the fact that the actual print industry and techniques have been changing not because web design thought if it first. I can’t tell you how many times I have designed something only to be told that the presses themselves or the prepress software couldn’t print or output what I wanted – it wasn’t because I couldn’t think of the idea on my own. As printing has evolved from film-to-plate > direct-to-plate > digital printing as well as prepress software finally catching up to the design software and the ability to convert type to curves/outlines font problems and limitations have rarely been an issue. In my experience with web design I have found more font and typography limitations than with print. Yes the web may have colour, video and animated interactions, but print is just as artistic from the choice of inks, varnishes, papers, textures, overall finished sizes, and bindery choices. In the end remember design can be trendy and people like to reference design and styles from the past (before the electronic age) and make them modern again and since print was around before web so I would say print has had more influence to web design overall. I will not say that there are not great web designs/designers because there are but please give credit where credit is due since there are some great print designs and fantastic print designers out there and have been doing what they do much longer than web design was even a glimmer of an “influence”. We are coming to a time where we influence each other not because one is web and one is print or that one or the other doesn’t know specific techniques in regards to print or web – we influence each other because we are exposed to great design… period.