The Emergence of Printed Magazine Vs. Online Magazine

The first inscription of writing comes as far as I'm concern is the golden age of Mesopotamia. However printed newspaper was invented during the late 1400s whereby news pamphlets were passed around in Germany. It was Johannes Gutenberg who first created and perfected the printing machine based on his researched called Kunst und Aventur (art and enterprise), thus printing the first ever Gutenberg Bible makes history once again.

However the first true newspaper was the London Gazette in 1666, it was also the first English newspaper. Newspaper has always been a serious piece of article containing written works by reporters and journalist informing the public who buys it about the happening withing the internal affairs of the country and international affairs. Here comes the formation of magazine which thicker than newspapers. Magazine has spawn into introducing different type of topics so that it can sell. So the magazine is not just an entity on serious news with new types of topics being introduced such as sports news, entertainment news, world news, business news and lifestyle news.

The reign of both newspapers and magazines may soon be depleting in the 21st century. Due to the fact that it was the digital age of technology combining with the convergence and evolution of the Web 2.0, online news has been the new form of media. The new and younger generation is taking it much more seriously but the older generations still wants to stick to their old ways of waking up in the morning and picking up the newspaper and read while having breakfast in the morning. Perhaps going all the way to the bookstore and buy a magazine and get back home to read is really a troublesome.


Grabbing The Magazine The Old Ways.

(Source: PC GAMER, April 2008 issue)

When I pick up my favorite all-time gaming magazine (PC GAMER) to read, my eyes tend to go from left to right, top to bottom, line by line. This is simply the reading path for print media which is usually linear. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p.204), it was mentioned that any formation of reading such as skipping the pages to the last is called cheating which somehow place the reader in a slight sense of guilt.

Written words are the dominant element in print media as compared to images. This is because images are just a minor tool to let the readers have a good feel of what is what (Kress & van Leeuwen 1998, p. 187). Images are more likely to be a paid advertisement and the layout of the newspaper is based on design theories such as information value, framing and salience. While the headline above is the most salience as it is the focal point of the paper. It draws readers’ attention and indirectly forms their reading path.

However, Walsh (2006) reinstated that pictures are the essential way of using color, framing, angle, line and perspective to grab the audience attention which is also known as a visual grammar. Basically readers are able to decipher the meaning even without knowing it's a PC GAMER magazine. By looking at the Soviet suit in red representing the coming soon game of Electronic Arts' Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. By detecting this, it is no doubt a PC GAMER!

No matter what kind of print media it is, a magazine is a physical entity which comes with hundred of pages and has to be flipped (Nielsen, 1999). By narrowing down its compatibility with its navigation skills compared to the online version. In other words, readers do not have any choice but to turn the pages.

The Power of Left-clicking!

(Source: PC GAMER VIDEO PODCAST )

As for online media, there is no specific way of telling how to read. In accordance to Nielsen's findings (2006), he stated that websites often read in an F-shaped pattern. This is because online readers will scan the PC GAMER's Blog-Turn-Video-Podcast in a horizontal eye movement. They will tend to scroll down the page to the bottom slowly from their previous movement (Nielsen 2006). Finally, online readers will read from the left side of the page vertically and scan the headlines for each section.

Here comes the proficiency of hypertext markup language (HTML) in Web pages which works as an added package for the online media as users can swiftly hop pages to view what they want to see. If they want to read the on the latest gaming news, one finger click is all they got to do and they will be transport to that site.

As many internet users have little patience when it comes to web pages, they tend to scan these virtual texts while picking out key words in paragraphs that interest them. Thus, in The Star Online, a one-sentence summary normally accompanies the headline to help readers decide whether to read the story or not. Not only does this save time, it also allows readers more time to explore other sections of the webpage.

The layout of PC GAMER Video Podcast consists of three column sections which is to separate news from advertisements. The internet works as a portable need for designer as they can freely manipulate the HTML and CSS codes to provide a dyamic content with visuals graphic that grab the audience attention and eye-movement. Most web pages are developed with videos and music so as audiences gets what they needed to know.

References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout, Blackwell, Oxford.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, Routledge, New York.

Nielsen, J 1999, Differences between print design and web design, useit.com, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>.

Nielsen, J 2006, F-shaped pattern for reading web content, useit.com, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html >.

Walsh, M 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print and visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literarcy, vol. 29, no. 1, p.24-37.