Designing for the Web is more like jazz than a symphony. When you design for print, you can control just about every detail, finely crafting your vision and then conducting the production each step along the way. Similarly, classical composers write every note in advance, even including instructions for how the notes are to be played.
The Web, on the other hand, offers far less opportunity for control. When you design for the Web, you start with a creative vision and then set up rules that everyone else involved in creating content from that point forward can follow. But you only have as much control as your initial plan allows you to have; once the website is live, it becomes shaped by its content. The design you initially created serves more as a brand standard for the website, kind of like the initial key and tempo off of which jazz musicians riff.
While one is not better than the other, the fact is that designing for the Web is just very different from designing for print. This article reviews and updates some fundamental Web design concepts, as well as makes some recommendations that will help orient designers making the transition from thinking print to thinking Web… Read >
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