How far apart are web design and print design? Quite a bit! It is precisely this fact that often causes differences between real print designers and ambitious web designers. Sure, certain guidelines apply to both areas, such as color, typography, image design and compliance with corporate design. But the layout here is completely different compared to what print designers consider optimal.
The beginnings of web design
Let's go back to the beginnings of web design; back then, web design in its current form didn't even exist. It was the time when programmers tried to conjure up a somewhat usable and simple design on the user's screen using code, while print designers were just getting used to layout design on the computer from typesetters. When “real” web design was finally in demand and this burden was taken away from the web programmer, layouts for print media on the computer had already become the order of the day. This is where the graphic designers felt at home until they were suddenly thrown into the deep end and had to create screen designs for websites that they (very few would admit) had absolutely no idea about. It was clear from the first designs that the designers were going wild and trying to transfer the print layout to the screen. In the days of pure desktop computers, this system was not entirely unreasonable. There were designs here that would make you clap your hands over your head today. Loading times were uninteresting, the main thing was that the design was identical to all other media.
The evolution towards mobile media
Time moved on and mobile media was on the rise. A solution had to be found. So the designs were transferred to mobile media, i.e. own designs were created for the various mobile media and the web designer was tormented with impossible layouts that had to be implemented. To bring movement to the site, there was a time when gif animations caused a pure "blinky-blinky" on websites.
A time of change was necessary here. “Real” web designers were needed who understood what it meant to transfer a design to the web without disregarding the guidelines of good design. Experts who pay attention to the corporate design, but do not ignore the user-friendliness and performance of the site.
The rise of responsive design
What had to happen came, web designers and print designers had different ideas about good design. What in the eyes of the web designers was a good site with a user-friendly and performance-optimized design was a disaster for the trained print designer. On top of that, the cost of all designs – desktop, tablet and smartphone – skyrocketed. A 5-digit amount was quickly announced here. Many also decided to create their own app to counteract this problem as elegantly as possible, because a desktop page on a smartphone is not exactly what you want. However, the costs for an app were often in the high 4-digit range and in the end they were not particularly popular. Hardly anyone uses an app that only serves as an image app on their smartphone.
It was the birth of responsive design. Pages that adapt to the corresponding media by automatically adapting images and texts adapting and positioning to the media size using grid layouts (column layouts). The result was that certain compromises had to be made to the corporate design and could only concentrate on typography, color, logo, backgrounds and individual elements, but layouts as we know them in print were no longer possible.
At the beginning, the designs were, as far as possible, responsive to the customer, which still brought with it a certain amount of design possibilities. Here the designs cost around 5,000 to 6,000 euros.
The age of content management systems
As content management systems have advanced, primarily for WordPress, many more options have emerged, but the number of cost-effective web designers has also increased significantly. A good image WordPress site, which is “ready-to-use” for medium-sized companies, costs around 2,500 euros today. Developing an individual design on it costs another 2,500 euros. There are over 7,500 ready-made designs for WordPress, many of which are free and others cost under 100 euros. So why spend 25x when you take a ready-made design, customize colors, logo, backgrounds and images and have a finished and user-friendly site?
Web design has changed and we all need to be able to deal with it. Cheap websites are on the rise. For content management systems, especially WordPress, many web designers offer a platform to develop endless designs and plugins.
Three categories of WordPress themes
The designs for WordPress can now be divided into three categories:
- Individually developed designs
Companies that value the fact that their corporate design is really implemented one-to-one on the web and follows this design on mobile media. If you start from a standard website without a lot of bells and whistles, you're already looking at over 5,000 euros. Additional plugins that may be added later or updates to the WordPress system itself often result in programming changes that have to be paid for dearly.
- Finished designs (so-called “theme as it is”)
Finished designs, e.g. B. reflect a specific industry. Using a pre-designed layout, all you have to do is fill the placeholders with your own text and images. In the administration area, only small things such as colors and font sizes can be generally adjusted. If you want more here, you will have to hire a programmer to adapt the site to your own wishes and then work again with later plugins and updates.
- Multifunctional themes – the “almost” jack-of-all-trades
There are now more and more multifunctional themes for WordPress. These can be extensively customized and many thousands of design options are possible here. Often provided with a lifetime license, there are designers behind these themes who ensure quick patches for WordPress updates and provide appropriate support. These themes are responsive and offer many options for developing an appropriate corporate design. But be careful! Here, too, many designers who come from the print sector miscalculate and do not even begin to understand the functions of such multifunctional themes and have never dealt with such themes. There are thousands of variations possible, that's a fact, but not all wishes can always be implemented with such themes without a lot of additional effort. But the limit here is much wider than with a “theme as it is”.
conclusion
So before a designer puts his hand to a web design with a ready-made layout, he should definitely take a closer look at this design and consider whether the design can be implemented with the appropriate “on-board resources”. This costs time and, last but not least, a lot of money and often has no significant influence on the website visitor, who has to wade through an almost endless number of competitors. It is important that visitors identify the website with the company, receive the necessary information, are guided in a user-friendly manner and only have short loading times due to high performance on all media.
