Designing for Web lacks that special something
Someday, I’m sure my kids will wonder why in the world I chose to work at a newspaper in college. In fact, they might wonder what exactly a newspaper is. They might never experience the inky hands from handling a paper with a huge, dark photo on the front page. They may never sit in class with pencil in hand, doing the crossword to pass the time. I couldn’t feel more sorry for them.
Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic, but the more endangered printed newspapers become, the more I want to cling to them with everything I can.
I spent this summer on the multimedia desk, designing interactive stories and graphics using Adobe Flash. It was an attempt to plan for the future; I thought that by making myself more skilled in Web-based storytelling I would be more hireable when I graduate in May. And that might be true, but I don’t have to be happy about it.
There’s something about designing for print that is a hundred times more satisfying than designing for Web will ever be. Seeing thousands of copies of your work floating around campus; either in the newspaper racks or in the hands of your classmates is one of the coolest feelings in the world. Even if you don’t get a byline, even if nobody ever knows that you are responsible for how that page looks, print is just cool.
I’ve never gotten the same feeling from a multimedia project. Maybe it’s because it’s harder to witness the user interaction. But mostly I think it’s the lack of something tangible.
Years from now, I’ll still have stacks of newspapers that I worked on. Illustrations that I slaved over. Beautiful, broadsheet copies of pages that I spent hours laying out, with the bylines of my friends scattered throughout. Evidence that I was once part of something way bigger than myself. And my Web-only multimedia projects will just be links, floating out in cyberspace somewhere.
About I Shot the Serif
The State News Visual Editor Andrea Zagata blogs about the world of visual journalism.
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Commentary
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Mike D
(10/05/09 8:32am)Report
Mrs. Zagata, I can on some part agree with your article, but at the same time must disagree with you.
As a design professional I have to agree that having a printed piece is one of the greatest accomplishments that you can make with your designs. And Yes the print industry is dying, but I can not see, at least in any foreseeable future, the death of print. Many newspapers will certainly fold in this economic climate, but many will still be around. As a society we need print, we need something that you can hold in your hands that you can experience.
BUT as a web designer as well, there is something equally as satisfying when building multimedia project. In some cases even more gratifying than a print project. With a print project, unless you talk to someone or see then looking at you piece, it just sits there and goes unused. With the web there are billions of people in the world that have access to your pieces. And by tracking that multimedia piece you can get the same feeling. By logging in and seeing that “your links” are being viewed by millions of people across the globe that you could never reach with just a print piece, feels pretty darn good.
And if you are searching for an example of how influential and memorable multimedia pieces can be, just look at how Obama ran his campaign.
So before you go saying that because you can’t print what you’ve made means it is a less influential piece, or that bears no evidence that you made something, think instead of how you could be impacting global mindsets instead of just local ones.