[thelist] Threatened by printies

[Heather Quinn]

Said director needs a new vision for his own future power and income,
one that will keep his hands off the web side of things by showing him
that the web can be beneficial to (and noncompetitive with) his new
plans and projects.

Re the project of using printies for web design, perhaps you could find
a tactful way of rephrasing the metaphor that you are an architect, and
the printies with the 2 days' DW training are building models of houses
out of Legos.

You could try something like taking the director and printies through a
deconstruction seminar comparing the design, structure and UI features
of the printed NY Times and nytimes.com, the more hands-on the better.
 Include demo'ing nytimes.com in 3 or more browsers and various
resolutions, including some with style sheets set for a hypothetical
visually-impaired user.   Let the printies get inside the paradigm
differences, be intimidated by the multidimensionality of the web.
 Print is high-res, high-control, 2D textured medium, ink and coatings,
when it's done it's done, and when it's done it gets packaged up and
distributed, and printies dust their hands of the project; web is
low-res light that's anchored in the top left corner, flowing down and
somewhat to the right, raggedly, with active link nodes that
interconnect it dimensionally, web is never done, web is never under
complete control, web's distribution ranges from explosive to ephemeral,
with a single consistent quality: continual renegotiation, and
successful web is based on ongoing feedback, analysis and rework sitting
on a base of good architecture, design and backend implementation.

Let director and printies see that the web can support printie dreams,
by giving them a good case study of how this works.  I suggest NY
Times/nytimes.com because of its reputation as a strong communications
company, and the fact that the NY Times has learned to use the web to
widen its audience for print, and vice-versa, as well as to use the web
to pretest subsets of new product ideas that are finally delivered in
print, including books, posters, prints, etc.  The web has helped
repoint the NY Times so it's more in touch with its audience, and more
immediately cognizant of the value it represents to its public.  NY
Times print and web operations seem to have developed a powerful synergy
that makes the NY Times as a whole a more viable company.

Graham Bird wrote:

>The promotional print design department is 8 or 9 strong. They come under the Communications Director's remit (he's an old school printie), and he is now pushing to absorb control of the design of the website.
>The print designers all went on a 2 day Dreamweaver course about a year ago. Some of them came back saying that web design was "easy"...
>
>Thanks for any advice,
>
>Graham
>
--
Cheers,

Heather Quinn
info at windyhilldesign.com
http://www.windyhilldesign.com