Showing all posts tagged: design
The 100 year WordPress plan preserves your website for posterity
28 August 2023
WordPress, creator of the CMS I publish disassociated with, has unveiled a one hundred yearlong website hosting and domain name registration package. If you have a lazy US$38,000, then there’s nothing stopping you from signing up. But I like the idea. It makes sense. When I first began designing websites in 1997, there was a consensus that the web, websites, and even email, was a fad. A craze. Something that would come and go. As did pet rocks and CDs.
It took only a few short years — or was that months? — before we realised though we were going to live on the internet. Forever. No, we weren’t going to crank up the modem and login via dial up, a couple of times a day, rather our computers would be plugged into the grid every last waking minute. And who could have foreseen — back in the 1990’s — that we would one day carry devices in our pockets allowing us to remain online constantly?
Now that I think about it, I cannot remotely conceive of a notion that the web, and all of its interconnected peripherals, were a mere passing phase. disassociated has been online (in one form or another) for twenty-five years, and I occasionally find myself wondering about its long term future. Like what happens when I’m longer here? The thought of making provision in my will, to keep this website registered and online, has crossed my mind once or twice.
I can’t imagine I’m the only one. To some people, their website is an integral part of their identity. I’m talking particularly about those who document every aspect of their lives on a website or blog. It would be a shame, a loss even, if upon the death of the publisher, these resources simply vanished because no one was paying the domain registration and hosting bills. These are matters I doubt few people even remotely considered twenty-five years ago.
The WordPress one hundred year package is therefore compelling, even though I can see people baulking at the $38,000 price tag. I quickly ran the numbers, and based on current domain and hosting costs, could keep disassociated afloat for a century for maybe half that cost. But I’d need someone, a dependable descendent, I could rely on to carry out the necessary administrative tasks of keeping my website online when I’m gone.
On that basis, the cost, although steep, begins to look a little more palatable. Everything is taken care of, without the need to burden someone else. But the WordPress proposal poses intriguing questions. Do you believe preserving your website is essential to preserving your memory? People are already giving thought to what happens to their digital assets, things like email accounts and social media pages, on their deaths, but what about personal websites and blogs?
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Indie Blog, see random blog posts, go places in the blogosphere
4 August 2023
Indie Blog, is a blogroll website by Andreas Gohr, akin to ooh.directory and feedle, but with a slight difference. Instead of searchable lists, Indie Blog takes visitors to a random post from one of the websites on their directory. You mightn’t know where you’re going, but that’s half the fun.
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The Twitter rebrand, an X shaped railroad switch to the wrong track
28 July 2023
Mary Winter, semiotics specialist at Australian branding agency Principals, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, about the symbolism behind X, the new logo of Twitter, now known as X. The move possibly says a lot about what is going through the mind of Elon Musk, owner of Twitter/X.
Semiotics analysis tells us X is highly symbolic, triggering intense feelings and emotions. There are clear patterns around X in our culture signalling physical or moral danger. Case in point, X often turns up in pornography in the form of X-rated content. As something that signals moral boundaries, our minds are alert to it.
Semiotics, in case the term is new to you, is the study of the use of symbolic communication.
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design, social media, social networks, Twitter
The delicious Rotating Sandwiches wins inaugural Tiny Awards
26 July 2023
Rotating Sandwiches, designed by Lauren Walker, has been named winner of the inaugural Tiny Awards, a prize celebrating “the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.” Rotating Sandwiches is exactly what it says on the tin — go see for yourself — but if you’re feeling a bit peckish it might be an idea to wait until you have food in front of you.
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X marks the spot, new Twitter logo soon, following name change
24 July 2023
Twitter owner, Elon Musk, says the present blue bird logo of the micro-blogging service will be changed to an X styled emblem, and that an interim logo could be unveiled sometime today. The new branding follows the recent name change, from Twitter to X Corp last April.
The changes are part of a bigger plan that will see Twitter/X transform into something similar to WeChat, an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app, that is popular in China.
Exciting times, no?
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design, social media, social networks, technology, Twitter
How to define Australian food, if that is possible
15 July 2023
Australian food critic Besha Rodell, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:
What is Australian food? Is there even any such thing? These are questions I’ve been pondering, researching and, at times, vigorously debating, for decades. We are not Europe. We are not Japan or Korea. Aside from the food of our incredibly diverse — and until recently, often ignored — First Nations cultures, we do not have thousands of years of edible history to draw upon and call our own. This makes the question harder to answer, but it also frees us from some of the bonds that tradition can impose.
I was once part of a community of design creatives called the Australian Infront, where all of these thoughts and questions were raised, except we were discussing design not food.
The group’s objective was to elevate the perception of Australian web design, as we felt the work of local designers was being overshadowed by designers, well, everywhere, but especially in North America and Europe. But we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly Australian web design was, while also working out what it meant to be Australian.
Perhaps we should have framed the question/s from a food perspective instead.
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The Loneliness Project, stories of loneliness curated by Marissa Korda
11 July 2023
I’m a little late to the party, the Loneliness Project, by Canadian graphic designer and illustrator Marissa Korda, has stopped publishing stories, but previous editions remain online for your reading enjoyment. I have to say I like the way each story is presented as a different apartment building (go to the website and see what I mean).
But the idea people can still be lonely, even though they live among a group of others, albeit separated by the wall of their dwellings, is poignant. Certainly, someone residing alone in an isolated house in a remote region may experience loneliness, but that it may happen in such close proximity to others seems unthinkable, even though of course it happens all the time.
But you don’t need to live alone, and not know your neighbours, to feel lonely. As these anecdotes about loneliness go to show, you can be surrounded by people, and still feel utterly alone.
And perhaps tangentially related, loneliness, particularly among young adults, has seen a rise in the number of friend-finder apps, not dissimilar to the likes of dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble.
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The AIGA best book and cover designs of 2022 unveiled
8 July 2023
The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) has announced the winners of the 2022 50 Books | 50 Covers competition. Almost five-hundred covers, from twenty-seven countries, were submitted for consideration in the annual contest, which commenced one hundred years ago, in 1923. The fifty winning entries can be seen here.
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The Tiny Awards, celebrating a small, playful, heartfelt web
7 July 2023
Voting is open in the inaugural Tiny Awards, which honour websites that embody “the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.” Nominees include the html.review, which I wrote about in April 2022, and ooh.directory, a blog directory, where disassociated is listed. Voting closes on Thursday 20 July 2023, with the winner being announced the next day.
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archives.design, an archive of graphic design by Valery Marier
28 June 2023
archives.design is a digital archive of graphic design related items found on the Internet Archives, curated by Canadian graphic designer Valery Marier. This is a great resource.
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