Bob Dawson

Illustration • Design • Copy writing • Web design • Animation

It’s for the web, dummy!

That’s what I had to keep telling myself over and over as I learned web design.

Let me explain. For more years than we’re going to talk about, everything I’ve done has been for print. So, what’s the difference? I’m glad you asked me that.

Print gives the designer a big, gorgeous pallet of colors to work with, along with an astounding number of typefaces (fonts). Graphics are printed in high resolution using files of 300 dpi (dots per inch). All this is output on a very precise offset press to get the best effect. What the designer designs is what the reader will see. The detail is amazing. You’ve all seen high quality printing, and you know what it can be.

The Web, on the other hand, doesn’t offer a designer any of those things. The color pallet is comparatively limited, with only about ten (yes, you heard me right, ten) basic web-safe fonts. Graphics can only be low resolution 72 dpi files or they’ll take forever to load. The viewers may see something close to what the designer intended—or they may not. Why? Because not every computer has the same fonts, so pages may not display the way the designer intended. People use different browsers, with different settings and, on top of that, no two monitors are the same. They’ll display different colors and be set to different resolutions. Oh, and they’ll be different sizes, too.

In many ways, web design is even more difficult than designing for print.

So which one is best?

At the risk of sounding like the recipient of the Dumbassity of the year award, I’m going to state unequivocally that . . . it depends.

It’s pretty much accepted that things designed for the web don’t work well in print, and vice-versa. Print offers sharp, rich colors and type, the detail is amazing, and it gets a message across very well. Print is wonderful, but it’s static. The web, on the other hand is dynamic. You can link from item to item, page to page, and it’s searchable, too. From a design standpoint it’s very limited, but it reaches millions upon millions of people.

They both fulfill a need. It seems to work best for many businesses when they use both. Contact me to see what kind of package we can put together for your business.

Uhm ... about this Web Design thing.

The times they are ~~a changing~~ changed.

Best_of_Class

In the beginning there was print. We looked upon print, and it was good. For many years designers created only for print, for print was the chosen media. I was among the faithful who carried out the design and illustration of materials for print, for print was gospel.

Then came unto me a strong, compelling voice which spake unto me, and this voice said unto me “Dude! Get with it! You’re not giving your customers all they need. Give ’em the web, too.”

I took heed of this voice and I, uhm, got with it.

More and more people had been asking me to do websites for them, so I decided to bite the bullet and learn web design: I did, and now I offer website design, too.

Companies can no longer get by with only print. They need the 24/7/365 interoperability of the web, too, if they’re going to succeed in today’s world and reach the greatest number of people.

I don’t do huge database driven sites like Amazon.com (those take large teams of dedicated coders), but I do offer good, attractive sites for my customers.

Contact me to see what I can do for you.