Taking The Leap Into Media

As Katherine McCoy states in the opening essay of Taking the Leap into New Media, "Is new media design a subset of graphic design or a sibling ... under the larger umbrella of communications design?" This defining question underlies the major problem faced by design studios today: whether to incorporate a new media/Web design department within their existing company or start a sister company to handle it.
The book profiles 15 designers and firms that have successfully undergone this transformation into the new multimedia/Web/interactive areas of design, including Duffy Design in New York (duffy.com), Segura, Inc. in Chicago (segura-inc.com), and Galie Jean-Louis of Seattle, the pioneering art director of MSNBC (msnbc.com).

Each case study documents the process of how new media was integrated into or evolved from the traditional print design environment. Designers face learning new technologies, dealing with new clients, and new challenges. At times these challenges include finding new team members such as musicians, videographers, or programmers, or deciding to outsource work if specialists are needed.

Along with color illustrations of Web sites and interactive projects, the book offers tips from each of the studios profiled. For example, Pinkhaus/The Designory in Florida (pinkhaus.com) advises, "Watch your behavior on the Web and let that be a guide as to how you should design."

Designers even share the challenges of their projects. For the Allina Health System, Hall Kelley in Minnesota (hallkelley.com) created an elegant and inviting interactive CD-ROM that organizes different levels of healthcare information with clean layout and iconography.