Print Vs. New media

Print

Vs.

Online

There are differences reading from the print and online. Design principles are different in both print and online media. According to Kress & van leeuwen (2006),readers read from left to right or right to left considering their cultural background but according to Dr Jacob Nielsen's study, 79% of web users only scan a webpage instead of reading the whole text. This is because reading from the computer's monitor is 25% slower then reading from print and also staring for too long at the monitors can increase eye strain.

According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), salience is a feature or some features of an element that makes it entrancing or the ‘degree to which an element draws attention to itself’. Thus, a document design is important in print or new media. This will catch audience attention to read the print or online. Walsh (2006) said that responses in an audience are usually achieved by the choices of color, size, angle and etc.

example of bad layouts (source- Google Images 2009)

Thus layout design is important to print and also online. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), element such as arrangement and visual appearance of writing contributes to meaning.

References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web), Useit.com, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html>.

Nielsen, J, 1997. How Users Read on the Web. Viewed on 17 November 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

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