Link: Design Observer: writings about design & culture.
"Before the early years of this century, when the arrival of higher screen resolutions and faster modem speeds made the internet an easy and engaging destination, the web wasn’t considered terribly appealing to serious graphic designers. In their absence, the original aesthetic conventions of the web were necessarily developed by amateurs; those early users who had their own ideas about how the web should feel and look. Today, this comparatively prehistoric graphic vocabulary has either been forgotten, or is simply regarded with the facile mockery that comes of 20/20 hindsight.
"Net artist Olia Lialina recently published Vernacular Web 2, an illustrated web essay, and a follow-up to her 2005, A Vernacular Web: The Indigenous and The Barbarians. In the two texts, Lialina, Professor of New Media at Stuttgart’s Merz Akademie, dissects the common graphic language of early web sites — "Under Construction" signs, shimmering bullet-points, redundant 'back' and 'forward' buttons, midi background music, and collections of animated gifs.
"Her essays, enthralling and clearly written (despite English as a second language), should be required reading for anyone who routinely designs for the web...."
