We spend so much time talking about interactive media and social tools that sometimes it seems that we could put a bit more energy into the regular old Internet -- last I heard, people were still using it. One area in particular that I'm not quite sure we've figured out yet is the integration of print documents into web presences. As a caveat, this isn't about rearticulating a print publication for the web -- which I think we're doing some cool stuff with (video features, streaming media, graphic treatments, etc.).
Print to web
Take, for example, the tools available for viewing print publications via the web. As I said, I'm all for blowing out print publications and reinterpreting them for the web, but I believe that there is value to being able to view the publication as designed for its primary medium in full form. Unless a piece has been conceived from the beginning as being integrated (web/print), there is certainly a "primary" medium -- in this case I'm talking about print. So, in developing the piece a designer will take great care in placement of images, font treatments, balancing spreads and so on to maximize the reader's engagement with the content. We see some really artistic and creative interpretations of that same content for the web, but I do believe that it also makes sense to give folks the opportunity to experience that primary print design on the web. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that we're getting the best look via a PDF document with page-flipping functionality. Readability, for example, still doesn't quite cut the mustard. We're using one of these services, Issuu, for some of our publications but I think there is still some headroom here. Maybe the iPad will be a game-changer, but that's not yet how the majority of readers are accessing these documents at this point.
Web to print
It also seems that we can be doing our designers, constituents and budgets a favor by rethinking the whole print to web paradigm, particularly for short-run documents that are frequently updated -- handbooks and catalogs for example. Why design something in print that is then translated for the web and then updated on the web rendering the print document outdaed? This is particularly troublesome when the document is only going to be printed on very short runs. Not the best use of resources.
Why not flip the model and produce these documents as easy to use websites, the content of which can be printed on demand? Gettysburg College appears to be doing exactly that with their catalog. G'burg's Director of Web Communications and Electronic Media Paul Redfern says that their CMS handles the conversion from web to print, with only a small amount of programming time necessary to make the documents print-friendly.
This is a topic that is always evolving because the technology is always evolving. I think it's possible to slow things down a bit though, by thinking about how we are presenting the message to our various constituencies and how we are mobilizing resources to get it done.
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