When you hear about a graphic design, you probably immediately think of design that is primarily done for the internet. We live in a digital age where more business than ever before is conducted online. While graphic designers are regularly tasked with creating websites, banners, logos, and such for online use, they are still regularly asked to create print items for a large number of clients. Yes, e-commerce and an online presence is now considered essential, but that doesn’t mean that traditional forms of marketing have gone out the window completely.

It is for this reason that you need to be careful when choosing a graphic designer, as the design principles used online and off are somewhat different from one another. You may find a designer that is great at putting together a website and building your brand, but they may not have the skills necessary to do the same for you in all of your print campaigns. It is best to make sure that the design company you choose has designers that are skilled and adept at both forms of graphic design before you sign on the dotted line.

Let’s take a quick look at the differences between designing for web and print, which all begins with the layout of the design. When putting together a design for a website, the designer will work in pixels, whereas the print designer would be working in inches. Web design requires the designer to thin in terms of creating elements that are dynamic in nature, while print pieces need to be totally consistent. By that we mean that of you order 10,000 flyers for use in an advertising campaign, each of those flyers should be of the same quality and virtually indistinguishable from one another.

The way in which colour is used is also different in print and web. Computer monitors are much like your TV in the way in which they display colour, which is via an RGB system. Now think about your home printer and the colour cartridges that are inside. They are usually cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, which is where the CMYK, the colours used in printing, name comes from. The RGB system will not work in print and CMYK will not work online.

We spoke earlier about how websites are dynamic and print media is static. To explain that a little further, the elements of a website, such as the menu, can be quickly and easily moved around by the designer to suit the needs of the owner and the visitors to the site. In the case of print, once those 10,000 flyers have been printed off and sent out, there is little anyone can to change or undo something that is proving to be unappealing in one way or another. Your graphic design company will work with you to create the exact design that you need for your business, but when you are going with the print format, you had best be sure that the finished design is what you really want before sending it to print.

For support with your print based graphic design or digital/web based graphic design, or simply for more information, call 01904 430 666 or get it touch via the contact us page.