The worlds of print and digital marketing and communications continue to be more integrated and complementary. Today, no communications manager or marketer would focus on one platform
without integrating its execution with others. It’s simply how consumers absorb information today.
Designing for print and digital platforms can be quite different. They feature various substrates, resolutions, file formats, and production processes; yet the trend is to make projects work seamlessly despite the differences.
Images, text, color, and placement are the fundamental elements of all design. A flyer needs to use color, text and visuals effectively, and promote engagement regardless of which platform displays the information.
Print Design
Print, it’s true, requires considerations all its own. The physical real estate of the paper size is finite and places physical restrictions on designs with gutters and bleeds. The final product is largely static and cannot be changed once it’s produced. Print needs higher image resolution of 300 dpi to reproduce well. The medium can also have a fundamental impact on design as colors appear slightly different on substrates such as paper grades, vinyl, or plastics.
Print is not technically interactive, but it offers a tactile experience that digital cannot match. Substrate textures, inks with scents, different finishes, cutouts, and creative folds engage the senses.
Print designers have greater control over the user experience. Readers always see fonts and layouts, for example, as the designer intends. Content consumers don’t have control over the visual hierarchy of the design that guides their eye through the flow of content.
Digital Design
By comparison, digital real estate is practically limitless; content can be changed at any time; resolution requirements are much lower at 72 dpi, and a screen is the only substrate in use.
Digital design is highly interactive. Designers can easily incorporate links, videos, live feeds, and surveys into their designs. User interaction is less linear, and navigation structures make it easy to find information by clicking, tapping, or scrolling around at will.
Designers have less control regarding how users experience content. Text, images, and layouts are responsive and adapt to different screen sizes. Readers can view content in portrait or landscape and users can zoom in or out and even block some content. If a font chosen by the designer is not present on the viewer’s device, it will use a substitute font. The results are unpredictable.
Measuring audience engagement, however, is much better with digital. It’s easy to see and measure user activity in real time on all channels, enabling easy adjustments when necessary.
New Tools for Designers
However diverse print and digital designs are, all designers must have the ability to transfer and integrate content on all channels. For the many designers who work in both spheres, new programs like Turnstyle, from GTxcel, can easily expand the lifespan of print.
These programs bridge the divide between print and digital. Designers and other content creators easily upload their work and create digital versions of designed pages, injecting videos, webinars, podcasts, and other interactive elements into articles or brochures.
The program extracts, categorizes and transforms content, including advertising, into responsive HTML pages that closely match the printed originals. Turnstyle can present archived articles along with current stories, for example.
A dashboard collects and displays real-time data on key performance metrics for content, ad performance, traffic, and more.
Whether designers work primarily in print or digital, the objective is always to deliver immersive experiences that engage users. Increasingly, as consumers choose for themselves how they want to keep up with news, or receive marketing messages from favorite brands, design must be everywhere all at once. Employing effective tools to do this is now the name of the game.
digital real estate, interactive design, user experience, responsive layouts, audience engagement, real-time data, print and digital integration, turnstyle program, immersive experiences, adaptive content