Design is Cool

Design and appearance are the most potent cause and effect partnership since cheese and tomato found a jaffle machine.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

When I typed anti-design into Google, hoping for an easy definition to help me get my head around the meat of this post, this is what I got.

It’s a piece by Norwegian design agency Anti.  In a lot of ways you could say it is anti-design… traditional hierarchy, scale and focus of the piece are definitely distorted, as well as the function of owls digressing from their role in the eco-system. But let’s not dissect art; we’ll be here all day.

Anyway.

How anything is designed CREATES its appearance, which is the means by which it is distinguished, judged, and remembered.

The way things are designed (and thus the way they appear,) is paramount to the way we consume and categorize them, and feeds directly into how popular they are.

So that means on the Web, the way you design your page is not only a distinctive marker of yourself and your aesthetic preferences, but it categorizes your page in consumers’ minds, ( in turn shaped by trends and perceptions of what is ‘cool,’ and what isn’t,) and effectively determines how many hits you get.

Since you always want to get as many hits as possible, you want to design your page in accordance with these ‘cool’ criteria. Apparently, the way to make your page appear ‘cool’ is to be minimalistic.

Webpages that ‘suck’ are ones that are too busy, say Flanders and Willis. Busy with background images, mixed fonts, graphics, (i.e. Java, Javascript) all just suck. And they suck because they ignore both the ‘sans serif and white space minimalism.’

So minimalism= cool. If you design your page in accordance with this style, you and your page are marked as cool. You know the rules. You’re up with it. You’re not a web amateur.

But then there’s a problem. If everyone’s cool, and everyone’s minimalistic, then won’t cool become the norm? How will this help me sell my site? The answer, O Hallowed Bloggers, is anti-design.

Anti-design is a movement started in 1960s Italy, in response to ideas of commercially (i.e. conventional, i.e. what is cool) ‘good design.’ Playing with design elements and principles such as scale, tone, form, colour, balance, hierarchy etc., often the featured objects’ ‘fundamental value’ is undermined. These are Alan Liu’s Rules of Cool.

So by using principles of anti-design, you’re giving minimalism your own spin, helping your page stand out from the crowd. Marking your own identity as a producer by showcasing your aesthetic preferences, marking yourself as familiar with conventions of web design and what is required to make it stand out/ get hits, and thus not marking yourself as an amateur.

My niche, social commentary, I don’t feel has a specific design style that is really consistent. I think the individuality of the blogger’s voice is more important, and depending on their tone/ design constraints they might experience due to their hosting site etc, they might add personalized elements like widgets and custom headers.

I chose my theme based on the easy symmetry and contrast it provides. I figure maximum contrast via black on white gives the best readability.  Again, I went for minimalism- its cool so that makes it user-friendly on that fundamental level. To personalize my blog I added the page ‘Who Am I?’ in which I feature a picture that stylistically (and conveniently,) addresses anti-design style.  Also my choice of widgets and a custom header conveys a sense of my individuality.

So my goal is to first be marked as a blogger who knows about the rules of design-cool, and therefore is not a web amateur, who is also an individual and therefore whose written voice is interesting and unique and just makes you want to read everything I’ve ever written. Plus you guys get to know me a little. But I mean don’t get too excited, we’re not facebook friends just yet.