Online Media vs Print Media

Principles of design for online and print media

Print
Kress and van Leeuwen (1998) stated that print media focused more on text (multimodality), with academic grammar structures. Print media tend to play around with words. Hence, the text is usually longer and more detailed compared to online text. Redshaw (2003) stated that print 'controls' the information presented to the readers. There are steps or a chronological order to how the information should be presented. For instance, an introduction to a topic needs to be put forth before the actual content and lastly, a conclusion to that topic.

Online
As for online media, although text is important, it has to be concise, scannable and objective (Morkes & Nielsen 1997). Unlike print media, overly-structured grammar is not encouraged. Online readers tend to scan the text rather than read through it thoroughly (Nielsen 1997). Readers have the advantage of choosing what they want to read in the text as the information presented to them is categorized into sub-headings, columns, and other forms of classification. The information is hardly arranged chronologically.

An example of a good website as according to Jacob Nielsen's web design tutorials.
As we can see, the layout information is designed in F-shaped way and is destributed from left to right. It is scannable and concise.

(Sourced from Make Believe)

An example of a bad website design.
As we can see, it is distractive, with its bad layout and image. The layout is not in a F-format as i should be, rather, everything is focused only in the centre. The image displayed is unattractive very contrast to the color of the background.
It is not organized, neither is it scannable because the displayed information is poorly presented.

(Sourced from www.istanbul.tc)

Compare and contrast of an example from a print and online media

An example of news print, The Star newspaper

(Sourced from Google Images)

An example of online news website, a screenshot of The Star Online

Newspaper in print, is designed in a Z-way as can be seen from the example above while an online news site is designed in a F-way. Nonetheless, in both print and online, information is distributed from left to right. News or things that are 'given' or known are placed on the left and things that are 'new' are on the right. This is because readers read from left to right. In print, it is more text-based while online news are shorter and more concise. However, both media used both text (multimodal) and graphics (monomodal) to convey their message to their targeted audience.

Reference list:

1.) Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in Approaches to media discourse, eds Bell, A & Garrett, P, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 186-219.

2.) Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, 'Reading Images', Chapter 6: The
meaning of composition’, pp. 179-208

3.) Morkes, J & Nielsen, J 1997, Concise, Scannable and Objective: How To Write For The Web, Useit.com, viewed at 28 April 2008 at http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html

4.) Nielsen, J 1999, Differences Between Print Design and Web Design, Jacob Nielsen's Alert Box, viewed on 29 May 2008 at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html

5.) Redshaw, K 2003, Web Writing vs Print Writing, Kerryr.net, viewed on 1 May 2008 at http://www.kerryr.net/webwriting/guide_web-vs-print.htm

6.) Web Design vs Print Design 2008, Design News Next, viewed on 1 May 2008 at http://www.designnewsnext.com/Article/131.html