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I regularly come in contact with many print designers who insist on designing websites as well as promoting their services as web designers or so called ‘interface designers’.

So I’d just like to take this opportunity to say that, in my experience, print designers can’t design websites. Why is this the case though? What does a print designer need to consider when attempting a new website design project? Here are my thoughts on the matter.

Before I continue may I just state that this is no random rant as I was once a print designer myself and have first hand experience of both sides of this design coin. I’ve many years experience working in repro, printing and the advertising sector and in my early ventures into the wonderful world of web design I can look back and honestly say I didn’t have a clue. Unlike most though I embraced the web, was eager to learn by my mistakes, better my last project, push boundaries and soak up as much knowledge as possible. It wasn’t until I began to learn how to physically build websites and learn html that I began to fully understand and appreciate just how a website works, behaves, functions and how web users interact with it.

So why can’t print designers design websites?

• Print design and web design are two completely different mediums, each with its own individual requirements, technical considerations and problems. Print designers have to deal with terms such as blend, trim, pagination, dot gain, spot colours, CMYK, dots per inch and more. Web designers on the other hand need to consider such things like the variations in screen resolution, page folds, white space, load times, accessibility, usability, search engines, RGB, pixels and the multitude of different programming languages and platforms that are available.
• Print designers are only concerned with the visual look of the page not the functionality. They’re use to designing for a fixed size which doesn’t move, expand or contact, that can’t be interacted with or isn’t affected my a users personal preference for font size or disability. Design for print doesn’t have to be intuitive to a readers needs. It’s set in stone and can’t be changed unless you go to the expense of a reprint. For this reason print designers will see a flat web page visual as a brochure cover of fixed size and not as something that needs to have functionality.
• Graphic designers work in millimeters using high resolution images. Typically 300dpi (dots per inch) while a web designer works in pixels at a resolution of 72 pixels/inch. I find when working up a design that has been originally visualized by a print designer that the resulting page isn’t to scale. The end result generally tends not to flow, is unbalanced and not very user friendly.
• As graphic designers are only concerned with the visual look they don’t see a design from a users point of view. They don’t look at a website from that third dimension that the flat page brochure doesn’t have. They’re most definitely not aware of web standards, usability or accessibility issues.
• A print designer doesn’t take into account the basic building blocks of search engine optimisation. In my opinion this is a crucial consideration if you’re to be using your website as a means of promoting your business, products or services to the world wide web.

Tips and advice for print designers who wish to design for the web

• Firstly, plan the structure of your website and think from a users perspective. What are the key services or products that you want the website to focus on? Try to think about how you’re going to lead a visitor into the website.
• Don’t think in terms of single pages but consider the site as a whole. Visitors can come in from anywhere to any page on your website. They’ll need to get to other pages on the site in as few clicks as possible so usability is a key consideration. Before you begin the design process, draft out a wireframe sitemap of the website. Think about how the pages and sections knit together. How many levels are there in the website hierarchy? How will you lead a user through the website? Where will they land? How will they get to the key information pages? How quickly will they be able to do this? What is your method of converting that visitor into a paying customer or sales lead? Always aim to provide a call to action, a method of contact.
• Keep the layout simple, make the navigation easy to follow and prominent on the page. If a user can’t find their way round the website they’ll be gone.
• Consider web standards; find out what they are and why they are important. Not everyone is able bodied.
• My preference is to design for 800 x 600 pixels at 72 pixels/inch. This will make the website more accessible to those users with a screen resolution of 800 x 600.
• Bear in mind that not everyone will see the site in the same way. Colors will be different, font sizes will be different, these can vary depending on the users browser of choice, browser version, machine configuration or even security settings. A website needs to be able to expand and contract without degrading. It needs to be fluid to users requirements.
• Stick to standard fonts for the main body copy and bear in mind that some fonts are illegible at screen resolutions. Not all users of the website will have the same fonts loaded as you. If you do use an unusual font or one that is crucial to the design and feel you wish to portray then make it an image, but remember that its file size needs to be kept small and a text version will need to made available on the web page.
• Where possible try to use standard fonts for the navigation. Use them as text links not images. This will help the search engine optimisation of the website. It’ll help save time when it comes to any future updates to the navigation. A standard font will aid legibility and will scale in size depending on the users browser settings.
• Don’t use a splash pages. Splash pages are those introductory flash pages that users have to sit through before they get to your home page. Website users find them irritating, they serve no purpose and it also adds an extra click between your user and your products or service. They don’t help the search engines either. Unless a splash page is handled correctly it can effectively put a brick wall to the search engines. Your website won’t get indexed. No indexing means no visitors.
• Consider the implications of using flash. A complete flash website will, if done well, look the business but won’t get you on the search engines as flash is a self contained file whose contents can’t be accessed by the search engines. A better approach would be to use elements of flash within your websites design. These elements would add an extra dimension to a web page which clients love but won’t interfere with the search engine optimization of a web page.
• Keep the file size of your page to a minimum and don’t make your pages to image heavy, remember that all these images need to be downloaded into the users browser and not everyone has super fast broadband. A slow downloading page won’t help your search engine optimization and a bored user will go elsewhere.
• If you’re working with a developer to build the website for you, liaise with them closely and seek their advice. Remember to follow it as they are the professionals in their field.
• Finally, if you intend to be professional about the website design service you offer your clients I would advise that you consider learning the basics of html, web standards, usability and basics of search engine optimisation. This will go a long way to helping you understand how a website behaves and functions.

Tags: designers, print, seo, web

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.