As a public relations practitioner who does a good bit of design for both print and web, this topic intrigued me. Elliot Jay Stocks is one of the social media/web design deities of Carsonified (for the moment anyway) so this session was a must-see for me. He began by stating he came up with the provocative title and then shoehorned a presentation into it. Fair enough; it turned out well nonetheless.
He began by showing examples of print, such as book covers, and described how to find in them inspiration for web design. He then progressed to other print media and used a process of overlays to demonstrate how print design elements can be effectively ported into web design. It’s made me look at the process in a new way. I’ve already started scanning bookstores (since I’m in them all the time anyway) and magazine racks for great design ideas.
I twittered during this session about whether there is a conference out there that addresses a holistic view of print and web, allowing designers to consider both out the outset of a project.
Archive note — September 2026: The conference brands and web-design companies around this 2008 session changed, but the premise aged well: digital design did not replace print’s lessons about hierarchy, typography, rhythm and visual structure. If anything, responsive web design and cross-channel publishing made the need for a coherent design system more obvious. This is an early example of a recurring habit in my work—looking for useful connections between fields that were often being discussed separately.
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