Interactiviy in the World of Print

Printed brochures have long been an effective means of advertisement and information dissemination. These days, with the Internet community still growing rapidly, electronic media is quickly becoming as important as printed media. Books, magazines and other forms of media once confined to print are now being published electronically. E-brochures have become more popular today than at any time during the technological revolution, and make up a large portion of the electronic advertising world. E-brochures look and work like traditional print brochures with the added benefit of versatility. How.com

Why Add Interactivity?
One of the most often examined significant advantages of online media is interactivity. The main goal of online interactivity is to facilitate the feeling of interpersonal human communication and increase user autonomy by shifting control away from the media and to the audience. At the most basic level, websites can feel interactive if they simply allow users to click hyperlinks and control active navigation of content in a non-linear format. This describes the concept of user perceived interactivity– where the individuals feel a heightened sense of self-efficacy or autonomy in having control over content navigation when using the media.

Interactivity also refers to the ability and ease at which users can supply content as a co-creator by adding, modifying, or manipulating information, and the potential for controlling content personalization – for example, think of blogs’ feedback comments, personalized news outlets, and retailers that capture buyer patterns and suggest similar products.

More on Graphic Designers and Interactivity
Excerpt from an AIGA interview between Steven Heller and Kathy McCoy

Heller: Okay, but, along those lines, is the same intensity of experimental work being done today? I would say no. But I'd also say I may be jaded by the past. Do you believe that experimentation—testing the boundaries, developing new forms, creating new ideas—is alive and well?

McCoy: Previous avenues of experimentation have cooled off—or rather, I would say that those territories of inquiry have been widely explored and many “results” have been documented, disseminated and absorbed into design's body of knowledge.

Today, I think there is just as much exciting new work being done. The explorations are different now—as they should be. It is a different time with different influences. To identify where today's groundbreaking work is going on, we need to ask what the new conditions are. New work comes from new conditions—social, political, intellectual, economic and technological.

For me, most of the important new work builds off technological innovation. Much of the new theory is in response to new technology. Although there is a good deal of experimentation with form, it’s not about defying conventions and disobeying the rules of refinement as in previous work. “New wave,” “postmodern” and “deconstruction” experiments were shocking, often deliberately so, and created controversy. (I still find those terms unsatisfactory, although I don’t have any suggestions for better terminology?)

Heller: So the visceral shock of the new is old hat?

McCoy: The significant new work isn’t calculated to be shocking, and it doesn’t seem to outrage design traditionalists—although it may baffle many of the less technologically adept. It doesn’t “test boundaries” because the boundaries have vanished, vaporized by technological change. There are no rules to break because there are no rules yet. Instead, experiments search for and propose paradigms to guide us as we design in these new communications media.

Designers are exploring motion and sound, and interaction with the audience. Much of the experimentation is more conceptual. “Experience design” explores how to connect with audiences in time-based nonphysical media and interactive communications spaces. Although there are lots of juicy formal experiments that are more sensual than print could ever be—a great movie title washes over us and transports us with its multi-sensory spectacle and story—there is also a lot of very serious-minded experimentation that involves information theory, cognitive psychology, ethnography, code-writing and heavy-duty computation.

Heller: I agree that technology is the major stimulus – it always has been from the days of Guttenberg to digital media. What then are these innovations producing?

McCoy: Digital technology and time-based media give graphic design interactivity, motion and sound, and employ vast amounts of imagery, both still and moving. One major change is how typography has come to life. We are seeing wonderful examples of time-based typography telling narratives through both verbal and visual means. Our 35-year effort to integrate the verbal and visual—type and image—is now possible through software innovations and a wide range of media channels from broadcast graphics and movie titles to exhibitions, websites and software interfaces. It’s a media soup that blends and crosses all conventional categories.

Heller: Does this imply that to do meaningfully adventurous work, print is no longer the medium?

McCoy: Good question. Yes, today there is probably less ground-breaking work in print than in digital multimedia. But there are some really great cross-overs and influences between digital and print. I see digital multimedia ideas and sensibilities influencing print—for instance, Elevator’s VH1 media kit uses lenticular technology to make a hand-held “print” piece behave and feel like a movie narrative. (www.elevatoraccess.com/work/index.shtml)

I believe that interactive electronic media will up the ante for print design. Audiences are getting hooked on digital media’s interactivity and will expect to be in the driver’s seat in all forms of communications. Of course, a lot of print media already incorporates many interactive elements—for instance, you can read a news magazine in any order you want, surf through the departments, and read to your preference of depth. But print media can be more interactive and I think we will see designers taking electronic interactive strategies into the physicality of print increasingly.

Also, communications programs often require a wide variety of media channels. There are really rich examples out there of ideas that originate in one media being reinterpreted wonderfully into other media, including print.