Print to Digital Design

Print to Digital Design

As technology and time progress communications processes evolve. What has been written in print for years is now moving to a digital platform. As these changes are made it is important to understand that what works for designing information in a print document does not necessarily work in a digital document. This is a guide for adapting print documents to digital documents while maintaining effective information design.

Print to Web

In a project done by Chopping Block for The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the design team transformed an explanation of the process of printmaking into an interactive exhibit. “The design team actually deleted text from the project in favor of animation. Users can either watch as a print is created, or engage in an interactive process in which their actions propel each step” (O’Grady 172).

The “What Is A Print?” exhibit successfully exhibits information about four processes of printmaking; woodcuts, etchings, lithographs and screen prints and manages to give the viewer a good general knowledge of each technique in less than ten minutes.

Chopping Block researched the printmaking techniques for the exhibit and built storyboards for a site that would deliver extensive information in a compressed time frame. They ended up creating digital information that has maintained its place on MoMa’s website since 2001 and still continues to earn accolades.

Web Design Tactics

Consistency between Documents

While inconsistencies between individual print documents are not particularly jarring, digital inconsistencies are highly noticeable. For example, a reader sees two clashing web pages for the same website. This creates an unwanted distinction between the two in the reader’s mind (Carliner 48).

Think about Proportions

Most print documents are divided into grids or columns when the layout of information was planned. For website information design, abandon ideas for columns with fixed widths. Web pages resize according to browser width and viewer preference, so concentrating on proportion relations between page elements will let the user set the scale and the design will expand to fit that scale (O’Grady 104).

Resources

Carliner, S. (2002). Designing Better Documents. The Information Management Journal.

O’Grady, J. & O’Grady, K.V. (2008). The Information Design Handbook. Cincinatti: F+W Publications, Inc.