The incredible angst-ness of seeing

I was at a party the other day, and the subject of a c lean deskstop came up. That lead to a mini outburst from my friend about the current design aesthetics.

"Why, " he demanded, "does everything have to have that faux-glass look?"

"Ah, and the thin beveled text in Arial?"

"Ya. Everything has it ok. Even bubble tea."

I can understand what he means. It's just the adaptation of a style that does not suit the product simply because it's the default. I could explain to him that the soft edges come from technology trying to mimic organic shape, that glass is clean,  that the beveled look adds depth. But I didn't. He's not likely to listen because he's already jaded with this being shoved in his face.

Personally, I have no real problem with this, because substance of the content is far more important to me. Actually, that's a little treasonous since this is supposed to be about design.
Remember when everthing in the 70's either had a wavy or mod art look?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeahhhhhhhh via Google

It's a phase. It will pass. I can't wait to see what's coming next.

Blogging: Part 2

Every blogging community is subtly different, although most cynics would not see the difference between one cliquey set of people from the next. The design of each is catered towards the content being circulated by its users.

Let's  have a look at livejournal. It's personally been years since I've even touched my livejournal account, but it doesn't seem to have changed much. I still believe that it has the cleanest interface with the best community linking.

Livejournal (affectionately called LJ) is made of people who like to write. It was intentioned as a literal online diary for the everyday man. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a big thing at Livejournal, with much publicity months before the event itself. While the main page follows a style of the author's choosing, the reader can choose a much cleaner black and white viewing style for individual entries. The comments section is arranged by time stamp and is given generous space for readers to contribute.

Tumblr on the other hand is very image intensive. The whole community passes around pictures. It's very well integrated with Twitter. Each posted can be tweeted/retweeted and spreading like a pyromancer's wildfire. While not meaning offense to the whole Tumblr/Twitter bunch, the easy digestion/distribution of the media all breed a shorter attention span. This in turn encourages bigger fonts and larger graphics that can be absorbed in less than 10 seconds.

I guess you can't really blame people for shoving others into stereotypes. It's easy to get lost in a micro universe of niche interests and forget other people exist. Or worse, use it as their private palace where they can feel better than the rest without being challenged.

You know what I'm talking about. via agbeat

There's nothing wrong with liking antique furniture or writing long space opera version of Much Ado About Nothing. People sometimes fail to understand that blogging is a public platform-- and they're going to be open to whatever criticisms come their way.

Blogging: Part 1

Insert your preferred choice of terminology here: blogsphere, blogosphere, blognation. Everyone has their own term for it. I find the term 'blogosphere' too close to 'Vogsphere' and its subsequent allusion to terrible poetry.

Though really, you can find the worst poetry on blogs too. via urantiansojourn

So there's all this talk about newspapers and how they're quickly being overhwlemed by their online counterparts. Often times, the community can break the news faster than most 'reliable' news sources can.

Blogs have developed from diaries to almost anything under the sun. It's replaced the homepages of the 90's (remember Geocities? Angelfire? Dreamhost!?). Where once you needed a fairly in depth idea of how to work either a WYSIWYG webpage maker or hand coding, today's world offers much easier outlets of expression.

Rather than diaries, although those still exist, they have become powerful sources of information, entertainmental awareness or even political movement. I don't want to be so serious and point to Middle Eastern protestors and their Arab Spring, or Chinese bloggers braving their state censorship. Instead, I'll show you Never Seconds.

Is. This. Food? via Never Seconds

This blog managed to change the direction of school lunches for children far more than Jamie Oliver. It's gotten more people involved in what their kids are eating. Today, its hit counter is just shy of eight million views.

All because a nine year old decided her school lunch was less than spectacular. Blogging is now easy access to anyone and it's an open, exciting world out there.