Print vs. Online

"Good design is not dependent upon budget. It comes from
the ability to be imaginative, to be consistent, to organise information, in a creative way, and to make the pieces of it."
(Toor, ML 1998)

According to Jakob Nielsen (1997) reading from computer is about 25% slower than reading from paper and as a result people don’t want to read a lot of text from computer screen : so that the writer should write 50% less text from the original text.
Jakob Nielsen also adds the term of writing web page such as:

• Be succinct (short text) because from the survey mostly people don’t like scrolling their mouse.
• Scanability in term that the writer should make headline, subhead and emphasise the message for instances through different size and colour of fonts.
• Hypertext to split meaning, write a text which has deep content, focus on certain topic and also structured based on audience analysis.

Diana Reep (2006, p.177) also argues that writing effectively is really needed when designing for Web such as:

• Keep the paragraph short
• Use standard language, avoid jargon
• Use numbered or bulleted lists
  

Arguments by Reep and Nielsen are really true because compare to print document which contain much more text than web page, because the characteristic of print documents itself is different from online document. Print design is portable so that people can easily bring and read to read again whenever and wherever.

Figure 4.1 Article in Magazine

(sourced by : own collection)

Figure 4.2 Same article as previous but in using the term of webpage

(sourced from: http://www.seventeen.com.my/3love.asp)

References

• Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succint!, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, March 15,viewed 29 April 2008
  <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html> .
• Reep, D 2006, Technical Writing :Principles, Strategies and Readings, 6th ed, Pearson Education, United States.
• Toor, ML 1998, Graphic Design on the Desktop: A Guide fo the Non-designer, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, NY.