Screen vs. print document design

Design techniques for screen and printed document are two different approaches. The elements should focus for both documents are not the same.

Screen Document

For screen or blog design, the designing concepts need to be attractive and engage to catch people's attention as people normally tend to read the online information partially (Jonah, 2007). For instance, the design of the blog can be more colourful and putting some interactivity such as chatbox and hyperlinks to those bloggers are able to get interact with. Hence, the attractiveness, theme and colour of the design are the main focus for screen document.

                        

Image source from: http://blog.jamylcruz.com/2011/03/neat-design-and-layout-for-social-good-blog/

Printed Document

For printed document such as newspaper, the layout is important as it will affect the structure of the content in the document. Newspaper requires a well-organized system in its layout (Leeuwen & Kress, 1998). Since newspaper contains a lot of information that is too wordy, the arrangement of photographs, headlines and blocks of text will have big influence on reader's willingness to read. Therefore, the design for printed document should be more professional and serious by emphasizing on the elements of size, color tone, fonts, spacing and etc.

    

Image source from: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/11/award-winning-newspaper-designs/

Reference List:

Jonah, 2007, 'Document Design: Blogs vs. Print', red dot semiotik: sociopolitical and electronic publishing commentary in Singapore, retrieved from: <http://semiotik.wordpress.com/document-design-blogs-vs-print/> [Accessed on 26th August 2011]

Leeuwen, V, Kress, G, 1998, ‘Front pages : (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, Approaches to media discourse, Ch. 7, pp. 186-219