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Last night in downtown Baltimore at an artist's club/bar called The Windup Space I particpated as a presenter, along with Alissa Jones of Six Red Marbles, in a roundtable discussion hosted by the Baltimore Aquent office. It was the first in a new monthly series they have started, last night being the innaugural trial run. The idea is to broach emerging topics of interest to the design community.
The theme was meant to bring to light in a discussion what steps other designers have made in making the transition from print design to web as demand has grown. The following are the slides from my presentation. I looked at it from the designers viewpoint and the future of the industry as a whole. Forgive the clunky long slide by slide posting, but the upload of a .mov file was not working at 6:30 this morning!
I chose not to detail what I have done to make the transition. I have done what many in the field have done, run as fast as I could up a steep learning curve since graphic design was inexorably bound to the use of the computer. Alissa took an entirely different, yet fascinating look at graphic design evolution through the lens of the historical development of the web.
Please leave your comments! I'd like to hear from you.
Comment Callout: Peter Kaizer, Director of Catholic Relief Services Web Unit left a great comment that had a link to a downloadable PDF. Peter said designers might be well informed by the following—"Jeffrey Zeldman got his start as a well known author with his first book, Taking Your Talent to the Web ."
This PDF definitely looks like a worthy addition to the substance of this discussion. Thanks, Peter! Your balanced and informed comments are much appreciated.
© Copyright 2009 Guy Arceneaux All rights reserved
Guy, the reality of the matter is I see print design & web design as 2 very different disciplines which in some folks are and should be mutually exclusive. That's not to say a transition from print design to the web cannot be made and in fact Jeffrey Zeldman got his start as a well known author with his first book Taking your talent to the web. There are obvious parallels, Typography being one of them though type on the web is a very different thing than in print. None of this is to say, at all, that there is more or less value in either discipline and as a web designer & developer I am many times awe struck by my print designer friends work. All of this is to say that I believe there is room for both and that print designers don't necessarily need to make the jump to the web. Print is here to stay.
ReplyDeletehey Peter! hey Guy.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that the focus on developing strong design concepts and projects is media-agnostic to a point. While newspapers have dried up as a business model largely, there are scores of magazine concepts that need interpreting. I think the model for print usage is changing and that's not bad. Either way, it's healthy for designers to reconsider their position because as an industry we are all like GM or Chrysler in that we can ignore the tea leaves only for so long until it's time to change our business models and it's easier to do sooner than later.