Do you ever look at your favorite magazine on a stand at your local grocery store or bookstore and wonder what goes in to designing it? Have you ever seen that same magazine offered as a digital subscription and think that what you see in print is what you see on your screen?  That’s almost true, but not quite. While I’m not going to go into detail about how this is done on a technical level, I do want to share some information of what needs to be considered when designing for each method.

PRINT VS DIGITAL: COLOR

There are a few things to consider when designing for print versus designing digitally. Color plays an important role and the two aren’t interchangeable. When printing, CMYK or Pantone values are used versus when done digitally. RGB or HEX values are used for digital. This is important when using text with colors. What you see on your screen in RGB may differ than what is produced when printed and vice versa. What might look bright and fun on your screen might come out dull and boring in print if you don’t make the appropriate changes. Of course, I’m talking about a page with large text, for example. Say you have large text splayed across a page on your screen in a vivid green. Chances are that when you print that same green, you aren’t going to get that same vivid color you were going after. You have to make the appropriate conversions. You can either do this in InDesign by selecting File>Document Setup and selecting Print in the dropdown menu and InDesign will make those appropriate color changes for you, or you can manually do it yourself for more specific color. The latter gives you a little bit more control. How I do this is by selecting a Pantone color that’s close to what I see on my screen and once I have those values, I will find its equivalent in CMYK for print.

An example of a magazine spread that its intended use is for print. The large wine colored title looks great on screen but if not switched to CMYK values, they might appear dull once done in print. (Image by Aaron Huber on Unsplash)

PRINT VS DIGITAL: IMAGES

When inserting your images into a file for print and when using InDesign, it doesn’t really matter if your image is in RGB or CMYK because InDesign will do the conversion for you when you create that PDF for print. At the time you hit export to PDF, InDesign knows that it’s a file for print and will take care of converting those images for you.

When you’re designing for your screen, however, your images should be in RGB. Without getting too technical, it pretty much means that your screen reads and interprets images in RGB, not CMYK.

PRINT VS DIGITAL: TYPOGRAPHY

When doing text for print, it is recommended that a serif font be used for articles with lots of continuous text in them. Serif fonts are those fonts that have little “feet” at the ends of each letter and for print, are much easier to read. Novels, for example, will use serif fonts because they help the eye distinguish the letters of text much easier if reading for long periods of time. The same can be said for lengthy articles.

On screen, however, sans serif fonts are recommended because those little “feet” aren’t necessary to distinguish one letter from the next and sans serif fonts are easier on the eyes (you’re reading this in a sans serif font). We’re talking about minute details that one doesn’t think about but are utilized to allow the reader to have a more enjoyable reading experience.

None of this is to say that you should convert all the serif font for print to sans serif font for digital. That would be a lot of work. But if you’re designing something for digital use right off the bat, consider using a sans serif font for those lengthy pieces.

Another thing that should be considered is the text size. Depending on the font you’ve selected, the size for print isn’t that big. We’re talking about 10-11 pts for the size. For screens, however, fonts will start to be readable right around the 16 pt mark. That’s a huge difference but one that you will need to take into consideration. I have a digital subscription to a magazine (and a very well-known one at that) where I can tell that they designed it for print and literally saved a PDF of the same exact file for screen. No adjustments were made whatsoever and what is the end result? I have to zoom in and move my screen around just to be able to read it, the print is so small. This should not happen.

USER EXPERIENCE

Whether designing for print or digitally, how the user will handle it is important in its design. For digital publications, designers will convert their files into an EPub format that will allow the user to read it on their tablet or reading device such as a Kindle. EPub design is a whole different format that takes a lot of items into consideration that is truly another post in and of itself. But the end result is always the same: the user experience. As designers, we must think about the user so that our client’s publication (book or magazine) is successful in its message and its sales.

While this post was super, super brief, I hope you’ve gotten just a glimpse into the differences between print and digital publications.