Hi there! I’m the “new” guy here at 76design (even after only a couple of weeks, I’m actually not the newest!). They hired me because I’m apparently good at putting boxes on pages, and text in those boxes. Wait…no…that’s a terrible thing to say. How can I put this in a more romantic light?

I take a blank, untouched sheet of paper (Domtar Titanium is currently my favorite, much to the ire of pressmen everywhere. Sorry, but I just love a tight weave…and that sounded very sexual, didn’t it?) and on this blank sheet I am responsible for conveying all of the ideas, opinions, and facts that needs to be presented through the use of type, layout, colour, space, illustration and imagery. I create something physical that you can see, feel and even smell. Now while this can be true of anyone who has ever lasered something from Word, my challenge is more involved than your everyday piece of paper. In my field, I have to fight the most terrifying enemy known to marketers: Apathy. I’m trying to provoke an unconcious, emotional response in whoever sees so much as the front cover. When you pick up a well designed publication, you want to read it. The greatest compliment a Print Designer can ever receive is when someone who has no interest in that particular subject matter is quietly skimming through the printed pages.

So what’s so great about this print stuff, anyway? Aren’t we supposed to be reading everything on computers now? In the 1970’s, the Palo Alto Research Center (responsible for the modern GUI, credit where credit is due) was convinced that by the 1980’s our society would no longer use paper. More than three decades later and I think we’re using more paper now than ever! Are we just getting more wasteful? Or is there something to it? The fact is, as much as our digital inventions have made our lives easier, people still live in an analog world. Studies show that people don’t read the web, they skim through it. Jakob Nielsen, internet guru, has done studies that show only 16% of people actually read the web like they would a book. In fact, if you’re still reading this, welcome to the 16%! (Actually, his study was done in 1997 before the advent of blogging, so I would guess that number may have increased slightly, depending on the website’s purpose).

But is one better than the other? As someone who’s being doing almost all web work for the past three years, I can pretty confidently say that there isn’t. Both web and print have their advantages and disadvantages. The challenge is to know those advantages and disadvantages, and how to use each one effectively (Printed newsletters are dead, long live blogs!) Once you have a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish, then it’s just a matter of literally putting that idea on to paper!

So I guess that’s what I do here, I use the printed word to make people as passionate about the material on the page as the person who wrote it! (Is that more romantic?)