Graphic design is an old profession: the phrase was coined as recently as 1922, but the concept was a part of the art world since the earliest printing in 7th century China, until it shifted into its own discipline in the late 19th century.<\/p>\n
However, the shift from print design into digital has changed a great deal about the graphic design world. In some ways, designing for the web is freeing; in others, even more limiting. Here are some of the major differences between them.<\/p>\n
1. File Sizes<\/strong> 2. Fonts<\/strong> 3. Colors<\/strong> 4. Resolution<\/strong>
\nIt may seem as though the size of your website\u2019s images doesn\u2019t matter as much as it once did, thanks to widely-adopted broadband connections. But the reality is that compared to the print world, it\u2019s still enormous. In print, your image file size can be as big as you need it to be in order to produce the look you seek, even into the gigabyte range. Online, though, you need to stick to the smallest sizes possible to support visitors using slower connections, such as on mobile devices.<\/p>\n
\nIn print, you can use any font that you can find (or create). The fonts will go with the rest of your files to the print shop so that they can reproduce it. But on the web, you\u2019re generally limited to the eight or so fonts that are on everyone\u2019s computers: Times New Roman, Helvetica, Georgia, and others. This has begun to shift thanks to Google\u2019s Web Fonts and other such services, which can reproduce a wider variety of fonts, but doing so can slow down your website, so for now they\u2019re used sparingly.<\/p>\n
\nColors are an example of where web design offers greater freedom: whatever color you plug into a computer will come out looking about the same on someone else\u2019s using HTML\u2019s unique \u201chex\u201d codes. But with traditional print\u2019s CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key\/black) model, each printer\u2019s version of your color can vary slightly, and you\u2019re limited to the colors that are readily reproducible using those four base colors. Granted, that\u2019s still a lot of colors, but HTML offers 16.7 million shades.<\/p>\n
\nIn between a designer and the intended audience for his design sits an obstacle. In print design, it\u2019s the printer, and the various errors that can result in discrepancies between design and finished product. Online, the printer has no role, but there\u2019s still an obstacle: resolution. Everyone has a different monitor configuration, whether it\u2019s a larger or smaller resolution, a multiple-monitor setup, or someone using their cell phone to access a site. That means that elements of a design can seem too large or too small on certain configurations, adding to what the designer must consider when putting together a website.<\/p>\n