Screen vs. Print Document Design

Source: http://www.yalelawtech.org/trusted-computing-drm/let-e-books-be-e-books/

Conventional book has been converted into digital format to display on screen as the digital word is growing rapidly. E-reading/E-book is instant, convenience and interactive while compare with conventional book. We do not have to bring along those books that are bulky in size as we can easily access to E-reading in portable device anywhere and anytime. The presentation of ideas in multimode will enhance the messages conveyed by the author. The incorporate spoken and written language, still or moving images, sound and music in electronic screen will enhance the learning process of readers. (Walsh 2006)

	Print	Screen
Dimensional	2-dimensional	1-dimensional / N-dimensional
Layout design	Solely focus in document layout	Not focus so much on layout of web  design Readers have to scroll to render all elements
Navigation	Simply, turn/flip pages of the print materials	Insert links to direct readers to next relevant pages Multimode in document design for more interactions
Canvas Size	Bigger / Double – Visible Easier to read texts	Smaller Depends on the size of screen
Modes	Images and texts	Multimode – video, audio, graphic, texts
Resolution	Good quality of printing will have higher resolution.	Image’s resolution might be pixilated once it has been re-sized as to speed up the loading of image.

Table above shows differences between print and screen document design. (Jakob Nielsen 1999)

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References

Walsh, M 2006, Textual Shift: Exmaining the Reading Process with Print Visual and Multimodal Texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, pg24-26

Jakob Nielsen 1999, Differences between Print Design and Web Design, viewed 25 August 2011,

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