Friday, November 6, 2009

Print to Web 101

I went to an AIGA event last night, Print to Web 101.
It was an introduction for print designers who were interested
in web design. Four designers/web developers talked about basic
web design principles and personal experience on transition.
It was a pretty good introduction for my level.
I've been working on printer design professionally about 7 years.
I've had done some simple html ten years ago just for fun.
Of course, everything is different now.
I just sat through my first lesson of CSS two weeks ago
from my boyfriend who is mainly doing web design for living.
I made my first web page with CSS after 3 hours and actually
felt a little bit good. However, that tiny little comfort
was pretty much gone after 30 minutes into this introduction.

I'm not sure I want to become a web designer if I don't have to.
I became a graphic designer because I loved stuff in print.
I collected all kinds of stationary since I was a kid.
I loved a nice envelope, a pretty greeting card.
Loved to touch them, felt the texture of the paper.
For me, I almost always want something nice in print
rather than an electronic file. Web design is great,
but I just feel different about something I can't touch.

Also, web design is full of technical stuff that takes
way more time troubleshooting than designing.
I watched my bf spending 3 hours trying to fix one coding
problem all the time. I just don't feel like that's
the kind of design I signed up for.

I work at a publishing company doing local newspapers and magazines.
Watching much better magazines die, like Gourmet Magazine,
I can't help wondering how much longer can we hang on to this cliff?
What keeps our publications alive that Gourmet Magazine didn't have?
Apparently it's not the good design. As a designer, that bothers me.
It's like watching a bridge collapse before you try to cross it.
You are glad that you were not on the bridge
when it went down, but now how do you cross the river?

I think this Print to Web thing raised more questions to myself than
answered them. People showed me how it's done to make a transition,
but is that really what I want to do? If I stay in print business,
when will I lose my job eventually? Am I good enough to survive?
And will I be happy doing what I have to do to survive?
Questions...

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