Abstract:

By comparison a print object and its app, exemplified on two inserts of German Newspapers (Süddeutsche Magazin and ZEIT Magazin), the differences and similarities for reading, orientation, the relationship between text and image and their principles of composition had been explored in a student seminar at the hfg offenbach, visual communication. The results of this research, make clear how linear, hierarchy and hypertext structures define the elements of orientation and the process of reading, which seems to swift from informational to selective reading.

Which parameter of design catch our attention, lead our perception, imagination and thinking about text and pictures and which are the ones who define the orientation in a printobject and an app. Students in the Summer- and Wintersemester 2012 at the hfg of_main, tried to find answers to these complex questions in a small setting of two magazines. The presentation shows up the questionaires and results.

Character and criteria of a magazine like structure, limited space, the order of articles, pagedesign, the double page spread for images and text, the progressive movement by thumbing through the sites of a book, the breathing space through whitespace etc., all these habits that trained our reading skills had been compared with the skills an app generate. The navigation concept of an app defines in its search-and-find modus the structures of a magazine, likely as the pagedesign does before. The informative looking at pictures combined with the linear reading of textpieces give way to the selective reading on an app, we used to in schoolbooks – means having a various choice of action, reading, doings. The student workpeace, gathered in an app, tries to made the field of research clear and the swift of reading, where text and pictures have another impact on the process of recognition.

Keywords:

Writing, reading, book, tablet, magazines, design, typografie, layout.