Huh?
If you work in web publishing, even a little bit, then you'll know what I'm talking about.
I've come across this so often in my *counts on fingers* 6 year career in web user experience, where a designer who's classically trained in the print medium utterly fails to grasp the basics of web design. Which would be ok if it stopped there. It's when they shrug that off and insist on doing it anyway that the problems happen. But it's not about transferring your print design into html and css, or Flash, or whatever. It's about understanding the medium. Web design, with scant exception, must be driven by user needs. That's it.
I've learned that the best way to create a website that works is to follow the basic recipe of a healthy dollop of IA, a splash of usability and mix well. Add a pinch of design and season to taste. Test regularly and adjust recipe as needed during final cooking. OK so that's flippant, but here are some reasons why print does not transfer to the web and what's needed to make a website work.
print is a static medium
This applies in various ways. There's a limited space on a printed page compared to the web's scrolling possibilities. You can flick through books, but generally they're fairly linear, one page to the next. Hyperlinks - joy of joys - mean we can jump all over within the website, and out of it into another site. Then, of course, the content of the web is often ephemeral. It doesn't necessarily stick around forever (The Wayback Machine notwithstanding) unlike a coffee table book which gets rearranged on the bookshelves but probably won't ever be thrown out.
print design uses a table of contents, not navigation
And sometimes print doesn't even require a table of contents, depending on its use. On the web, though, and mainly due to the added dimension of hyperlinks, we need a permanent signposting system to find what we're looking for. So that's your navigation, and frankly any website with more than a couple of pages needs a damn good information architecture to hold everything together. I could go on, but it's almost dinner time, so I'll cheat and borrow someone else's words:
Good IA lays the necessary groundwork for an information system that makes sense to users.
[source]
readers are not users
Particularly if a website is a storefront of some sort - whether actual e-commerce, where users can buy things there and then, like amazon.com, or brochureware, where, for instance, a designer can show off his work - then a user needs to feel confident. They look for what they want, put it in their basket then pay for it. An information site, packed to the gills with irrelevant stuff, hides the one piece of information the user is looking for. Google can help, but making the information findable is key to the success of the site. This isn't reading a book, flicking through a magazine or admiring a letterpress poster. It's a whole nother ballgame. (I love that expression, for all that is wrong with it.) There's a browser to contend with for a start. Let's be honest. Most people don't understand the technology. It scares them a little. As a web designer/developer part of your job, like it or not, is to circumvent Idiot User Syndrome. The other half is to display the content you have in a logical manner which will work for the majority of your visitors. If it looks sexy too, you get a dozen brownie points.
Can I just make it clear that I love print design. I really do. I just don't want to have to work with a print designer on a web project. Ever.
Whoah. Ok. Rant over.
Shout out to The General, who shares my frustration, and to those who've gone before:
Differences Between Print Design and Web Design
Web Design is Not Just Graphic Design for the Web
design rant
Web design is not print design
