Print Vs Online

The genre change with print based and online documents consist of similarities and differences. Print based documents are based on textual material, while the online one can be a multi-modal basis.

From the layout point of view, print documents has a more direct salience point where the readers usually start from the left of the text, till then end of the material. The reading path is very much restricted (Walsh, 2006). In the mean time, visuals add in is to create a better understanding so that the reader has a better ‘picture’ towards the whole story line. On the other hand, online media provides a non-linear or sequential reading path which gives the audience the opportunity to choose and interact (Walsh, 2006).

Ironically, this phenomenon brings out an issue where the audience could not focus on getting the main idea but rather distracted by various elements like prose or interactivity of the web page (Schiver, 1997). Therefore, designing for online requires more theme based materials, which put all the related information in chunks and separate them to different categories for easier browsing.

The placement of both prose and graphic in these two documents are quite different as the designer can put alone a photo or picture could stand alone in the online publishing. Meanwhile, designer would at least place a caption for the photo if it was going to be published on print media. Prose and graphics are usually used more in web compared to print documents because the trend of retrieving information has transform towards visual cues.

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Reference:

Schriver K. A, 1997, Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers, Chapter 6 The interplay of words and pictures

Walsh, M. 2006, ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.