How Web and Print Design Differ

One will realize that prior to the advent of computers and Internet, print designing was the only known career! Thus web design came much later and is evolved from the discipline of graphic designing. The words graphic, print, and web design are really synonyms of the same creative art that goes into building an attractive or aesthetic multimedia presentation. Of course, if one thinks a little bit, there is surely a thin hairline between these terms and each seems to have evolved into a specific work culture.

Print or Web, a Tug-O-War?

There is always a little tiff between these two jobs though we should consider it to be unnecessary! Let us look at it in another way. The traditional "print designer" was always an artist. The graphic or web designer of today is more a technically oriented "mathematician" who calculates and solves designing problems. Nevertheless, both have, repeat, evolved from the earlier print designers. It is like Human Evolution where time necessitated a slightly different school of thought to incorporate the growing needs of the human race. There need not be this tug of war as one discipline complements the other in bringing about a high degree of combined creativity!

Analysing the Two Cultures

Look at it from another viewpoint. Taking an hypothetical company the CEO hired two individuals on the advice of the Consulting firm. Each manager was qualified and experienced in print design and web graphic design respectively. Everything worked out well and the jobs were progressing to the satisfaction of the companies profit margins and forecasts. Then a couple of tricky assignments came up that involved both print design and graphic illustrations. The two disciplines were confused and the CEO had to intervene and insist on their working closely together. Though it should have been the easiest thing to do the designers could not arrive at a mutually satisfying conclusion with the result that the project was delayed and an ultimatum issued by the customer to offload it to some other company. The teamwork expected was surely missing and therefore the job turn around time was not met. On analyzing the problem it appeared that the print designer could not translate the graphic designer's colour chart into a hard copy. The computer graphics can always be very different from the actual printing process and whatever standardization one uses for adjusting the monitor chromatic configuration may still vary with the practice! If the web graphic designer had some knowledge of the printing process and its limitations the process could have followed a smooth execution.

Hire both disciplines if budget allows!

Whenever one hires a print and graphic designer the possibility must be probed of training both in their colleagues' expertise as well. It does no harm if there is a bit of overlapping since common knowledge will always help in solving intricate problems and one also has the flexibility of each designer temporarily executing the job of the other in case this becomes necessary!

Wes Towers runs Omnific Design, a strategic graphic and web design studio based in Wyndham, Melbourne, Australia. Check out their website here: http://www.omnificdesign.com.au