“So, note to self, get in the same mental space for the final production work for web design as you do for print. Probably easier said than done.”

I’m continually reminding my clients that the Web is not print and that the perfection they expect from a printed documentis not possible (and not desirable) on the Web.

Not that standards don’t matter or that quality isn’t important. They do and it is. But my monitor is different from yours and my browser chokes where yours doesn’t. And, despite all I do, at the end of the day, I cannot control those factors.  And that’s okay.

For me, the differences between print and the Web is akin to the differences between broadcast and newspaper, between live music and a performance recorded on CD.

There is something vital and just a little “messy” about the Web – “messy” in a creative sense.

In my previous life, before Web design, I was a journalist who chose radio over print. You could still yell “Stop the presses!” in radio (“This just in….”) and change everything. You can do that on the Web, too.

Thanks for an interesting article, Mark.

I have not used Zanders yet, although I have been impressed by the samples that they have been sending me for the past year or so. Their site is great, not visited it before.

Btw. just heard your presentation at this years SXSW, you sound like a top bloke, always good to put a voice to a face :)

Lee

…oh well. I didn’t lose my job. Since then I’ve learned to follow a very stringent set of guidelines for proofing with a complete paper trail of signatures and everything. It minimizes errors and also spreads out the responsibility if/when errors occur.

At any rate, I totally agree with the topic of this thread. I work primarily in print and when I switch to web I totally am less cautious with little errors. I mean, I literally slip into a “oh well I can fix it later mode” that I would never ever adopt in a print project. I guess I never thought that it could hurt the final product or be a detriment to my creative process.

Still, you’re right, smelling and fondling paper is essential and really goes to highlight the differences of experience in working in the two mediums … no really Mrs. Boulton, it’s not what you think.

… the feeling of finality that comes with print still scares the shit out of me.

I completely agree! At the moment the only print work I do is a quarterly corporate newsletter, and as the date of submition and production nears there is this growing sense of dread that the client is some how going to sign-off on a copy with the company name misspelt on the front page or something similar.

Maybe print and web need to be looked at as two completely different animals rather than simply two types of design production. Print behaves more like a product launch, and web behaves more like a forever improving software product. You have alphas and betas and ongoing versions.

But maybe we occasional print designers are a little too hard on ourselves. After all, if GM can recall hundreds of thousands of cars back from the real world to solve the minor issue of exploding petrol tanks or whatever, what’s a little recall to reattach the CEO’s mistakenly decappitated head on the profile page of 20k annual reports right? … right?