Re: print vs net graphics

The point that Dr Nielsen was making is that Print Design and Web Design
are different. Print design works, but very badly, on the Web. Web Design
often works, but very badly, in print.

(By Web design I mean design which is well-founded in the medium, not
print-design techniques applied to a website)

Although individual graphics can most certainly be reused on the net (and
should from an advertising perpspective - it helps product recognition
immensely for many people) there are features of the Web which do not
apply to print, such as the prevalence of Web Users who do not download
the graphics - not an option when reading a printed document. 

On the other hand the web allows the construction of complex documents
with various interrelated parts being connected in a manner that is not
directly reproducible in print, which is generally limited to
two-dimensionality and is constrained in terms of its size, and the
ability to seamlessly integrate audio (again only good for some users)
into a document.

Charles McCathieNevile

On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Joanne wrote:

  Hi there,
  
  Whoever said that you cannot use print graphics on the net is wrong.  We
  do it all the time at Netvertising.com and Easy Access.com.  There are
  two important differences:
  
  1.	Print uses a much higher DPI [usually 300 or more].  The net is 
  currently 72 DPI.
  
  2.	There is a more limited color palette for the net.
  
  However, it is very easy to take print graphics and compress them or
  ever so slightly change them to make them work on line.  Here we
  routinely do this:  create brochures etc. for print and then recycle the
  art for the net. 
  
  If one wishes to do the reverse, i.e. use graphics from a web site and
  covert them to print - that is very difficult because the the graphic
  essentially has to be redone.
  
  Regards, Joanne Dolgow
  

--Charles McCathieNevile -  mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: * +1 (617) 258 0992 *  http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative -  http://www.w3.org/WAI
545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, USA

Received on Monday, 25 January 1999 18:23:25 UTC