While people are turning to the web for breaking news, it can also be a tool to attract viewers to the next day’s news. Many newspaper publisher created their own websites to provide online news as well as direct viewers to their print version, which is capable of providing a broader insight and analyzation of the stories. 

“For newspaper, the key is to offer content n all platforms: mobile phone, the internet and print. And “you have to care about each one equally”, says Jones, who has carriage of news.com.au and News’s masthead websites. “We are a content manufacturer. We’re not a newspaper company, not a TV company, we are a media company.” [ Full article: MacLean,S 2005, 'Print learns to love the web' The Australia, April 28, p.15]

Ultimately, it is the content that matters, readers would not want to continue reading if the content is not interesting or attractive. With the various genre that is available, it is finding ways to fit the content into thse different genre so as to cater to as many audiences as possible.

Observation plays an important role in designing. By playing attention to real life, we can combine creativity with practicality and produce our work that has impact and touches people’s heart. 

Design need not be too fanciful to achieve the best result. Reasonable graphic aids, white space and typographical element would enhance our work, but overdose will break our creation. Finding the balance, getting the right proportion and having consistency is as equally important.

Below is a billboard from the Cancer Patients Aid Association. No gruesome graphics or pictures of infected lungs and organs, like those in the cigarette, but a few plain words and it carried the message strongly across.   

By observing that losing weight is the trend of our current society, using a mockery manner and the simplest design, the billboard successfully conveyed the harm that smoking brings.

simple yet powerful

The picture above shows the estate agent advertising their houses to the public. The entire layout of the document stray towards a less serious mode with their choice of fonts and design. The question is, will you take them seriously?

The childish fonts and cartoonish logo made the whole advertisement more suitable for kids or childcare centre rather then selling property. 

Here we are talking about million dollars which is another reason why the approach should be more thoughtful and earnest. This advertisement probably will not earn the audience’s credence into entrusting them with their money.

Quoting the eminent english typographer Stanley Morison – ” Typography is the efficient means to an essentially utilitarian, and only accidentally aesthetic, end, for the enjoyment of patterns is rarely the reader’s chief aim.” This is especially true to books, newspaper, online journals and websites when reader’s main concern is to be informed. While posters, greeting cards, magazine article may have more flexibility in terms of being creative. Stanley Morison also mentioned “any disposition of printing material which, whatever the intention, has the effect of coming between author and reader is wrong”.  This argument comes into sight when the typographical elements interrupts reading rhythm and discourages the reader from continuing with the text. 

“Design is not, or should not be, mere decoration and abstraction, but part of the business of communication” [ Wheildon, C 1990, Communication or just making pretty shapes, 3rd edn, Newspaper bureau of Australia Ltd, North Sydney, excerpts pp. 4-8 and 11-15 ]

good typography is invisible, bad typography is everywhere...

When habit of reading the newspaper are not cultivated or when newspaper are no longer as interesting and when news can be accessibly available online, this newer and newer generation of people might just forgot what it was like reading the paper.

An article in the Guardian title US journalists eager to go digital reported, “America’s newspaper journalists are eager to compete in the digital world and want their newsrooms to speed up the transition from print to digital, according to a study of almost 3,800 journalists at 79 US newspapers.” [ Read full article @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/oct/23/us-press-publishing-digital-media ]

The media management centre survey shows that many journalist found that the transition of their work from print to online is slow and they are very willing to go digital. They could have recognized the demand and they are willing to supply. There are studies also showing that most journalist does not want to stay in print forever.

As we move forward, progression and evolution is inevitable. Hence, paperless society would be a possibility. 

Leaving the technical side to the engineers, let us talk about the design aspects of the print and the web.

As a print designer, we may encounter jobs like the magazine advertisments, product design and packaging, business cards or company’s branding and logos. While as a web designer, we would be working on those standard HTML websites, the flash websites, some online newsletters or banner advertising. The job scope between a web designer and a print designer clearly distinguishes the attention that each has to pay on the two different area.

 In the Australian journal of language and literacy, Walsh discussed about textual shift as the author examine the reader’s reading process from aspect of a novel, a picture book and a internet site. [ Read full article @ Walsh, M 2006, 'The "Textual Shift": examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol.29, No. 1, 2006, pp. 24-37 ]

When designers are aware of their reader’s processing mode and how most people tend to read, they may then design and serves their readers more efficiently.

an article from The Australian Business titled “Web journalism growing up fast” reports how those publishing companies combined audio, visual and written elements in these days.

“It’s definitely the kind of journalism we love to do. The best one I’ve ever seen was (photographer) Kate Geraghty’s multimedia presentation of a doctor who went overseas to commit euthanasia. There were beautiful images of him and his elderly wife and the audio was of her reading the letter he wrote.” [ Read full article @ http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26132575-7582,00.html ]

Old VS New Media

Newspaper would definitely appeal to people who are less familiar with the computer and internet. It is still the original medium that most people would refer to when in comes to updating themselves with what is going on in the world. 

A grab and go from the convenient store or a free copy before you enter the train station would be idea for most busy working adults. 

“From a harmless medium that even attracted advertisers, the blog is slowly becoming one of the most dreaded. You can be bludgeoned by someone blogging irresponsibly or become a fall guy.

The Brian Gorell blog achieved one such global notoriety and before his bizarre downfall caused by a cooking show, former Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej pursued an injunction that would give the government right to shut down 400 blog sites in the country it suspects of undermining national security and maintenance of social order.

Of the 400 sites spotted for shutdown, 344 included contents that were damaging to the Thai royal family while the rest carried personal attacks, obscene and other malicious insinuations. Blog responsibly. It could boomerang on you. [Full article @ http://business.inquirer.net/money/features/view/20080919-161543/The-blog-Good-or-bad-media]“

The above gives an example of the negatives impact of blogging when it is not treated properly and responsibly.

Besides social impact, it also carries certain negatives impact on individual as they blog. Blogging could be seen as a way of expression, seeking attention or a form of runaway. Things that individuals wouldn’t speak or discuss with family, close kin or parents but would advertise on their blogs for the strangers to look at and comment, with bloggers advertising their life and readers intruding into other people’s life,which ain’t too healthy.

Varies type of expression, all kinds of product, tangible or intangible, visible or obscured, are the evolution of a weblog, which was once a personal online diary. 

After Jorn Barger [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorn_Barger], an American blogger coined the term weblog to identify the process of “logging the web”, thereafter Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan start to cut the term short and used “blog” as both a noun and a verb and launched blogger.com in August 1999.

For personal usage, business or political purposes, it is no doubt a useful medium to voice opinions. It all starts well but where are bloggers going? One question that we should bring attention to is what are the futures of blogging?

A research by CNET news reported:

“The growth rate of blogs is impressive. Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, tracked more than 8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour. [Full Article @ http://news.cnet.com/The-future-of-blogging/2030-1069_3-5654288.html]“

Blog is growing fast and its ability to present information is remarkable. Anyone could go up to their blog and report on events that they saw in the next minute after it happened while newspaper and television news report have standard publishing time, so in terms of timeliness, blogging is faster.

Many companies notices the trend and had encourage their employees to keep blogs so that they could communicate within their communities as well as communicate with the outsiders.

It is agreeable that blogging brings benefits and is in growing popularity, but as time goes by and when things start to get complicated, will be the time when blog face challenges. Many bloggers had tried to make money out of their sites thus comes the question of whether are readers willing to pay for content?

“Not only is blogging easy, but it is also powerful. One person with a blog can really do anything. Whether it’s promoting a great product, but also (maybe more importantly) criticize a product or company…[ read the full article at http://blogaboutyourblog.com/author/matt/]“

Blog, indeed, is a powerful medium. It is more than mere expressionism and communication. It is advertising and promoting your thoughts and ideas.  Blog provides the ability to influence and manipulate that is great and effortless. 

Blogging is a form of free publicity, especially when one wants to market something. 

One could recommend a product in his blog and when visitors who read his blog agrees and made comment about it, he collected supporters in a way and earn credits for his opinion and the product itself. This goes the same way when one criticizes a product or service. This medium expand the borders of the power of words.

Blog’s convenience and accessibility makes it one important genre that is worth looking in-depth.