No, this review has nothing to do with the ‘Great Divide’ between Print
and the Web. This article is about how the two aren’t the same, and why
we shouldn’t anticipate the same effects and comeback from Print and
Web marketing efforts. Both mediums have advantages and disadvantages,
and finding just the right balance can save your company time and
money, serving to strengthen your company brand. Both media can have a
completely different audience or target groups.

And yes,
working together, they make stronger statements and messages. But, that
“stronger statement” can only be accomplished with total consistency.
If your printed materials are completely different in color and style
from your Web marketing efforts, there is a great chance that you are
wasting your marketing dollars.

Many times, we have talked
about this consistency and consistent way of using graphics to
strengthen your brand. That is, in fact, one of the most affordable and
proven ways of building a strong brand and making sure that your
marketing efforts are actually memorized by your target audience.
According to a recent study, reading from a computer monitor is 30
percent slower than reading print, and requires some extra eye effort.
That means that articles on a website should be shorter and divided
into more paragraphs. Messy text with a lot of mixed font styles such
as italic, bold, underlined and serif styles should be avoided to a
certain extend when it comes to the Web. Sans-serif fonts are easier to
read on the screen. Italic fonts should be especially avoided, unless
used for a Titles or subtitle accents.

Does that mean that
your web presence can’t actually be visually attractive? Actually, not
at all. You remember what we mentioned earlier: you should be using
graphics and graphical elements that will simultaneously straighten
your brand and represent your company in a professional manner, as well
as demonstrate a laid-out framework that will allow the eye to smoothly
float from one paragraph to another.

Some common web disadvantages are:

- Question of legitimacy
- Web users’ tendency to skim copy
- Users read slower and text needs to be shorter

Some of the points mentioned above are true also for the print design,
but with print Layouts, you have a little bit more flexibility and
setups are not directly connected to th scripting code, as they are in
Web design.

Print disadvantages are actually:

- Slower to communicate
- More laborious to change
- More expensive in every way

Goran Paunovic

ArtVersion developer of BrandingStandards