We live in undeniably ugly times. Architecture, industrial design, cinematography, probiotic soda branding — many of the defining features of the visual field aren’t sending their best. Despite more advanced manufacturing and design technologies than have existed in human history, our built environment tends overwhelmingly toward the insubstantial, the flat, and the gray, punctuated here and there by the occasional childish squiggle.
Following the recently shared article on “why your stuff is actually worse now”, this article explores why we live in a “slightly duller, worse world” aesthetically. Why is everything so ugly?
A friend gave me design advice once. He said to start with left-aligned black text on a white background, and to apply styling only to solve a specific problem. This is good advice. Embrace this, and you embrace Brutalist Web Design. Focus on your content and your visitors will enjoy you and your website. Focus on decoration or tricking your visitors into clicking ads, and your content will suffer, along with your visitors.
Some ideas David Bryant Copeland proposes in his Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design might sound a tad radical, but I do like the general concept, so I’m tempted to follow along.
The philosophy is rooted in the idea that computing systems should “simplify complexities, not introduce new ones.”
The idea outlined in this essay reminds me of the wonderful concept of Shikake –”the Japanese art of shaping behaviour through design”– as well as the beautiful approach to tech displayed in the fantastic movie her and I wholeheartedly agree with its central claim; We need more Calm Design.
For decades now, designers have been taught to consider human needs in their work — only human needs. But design that is good only for people, without looking at the well-being of our planet as a whole, has gotten us into trouble.
As mentioned casually in another context before, I admire the work of Space10 a lot. The Swedish research and design lab is funded by IKEA on its mission to “create a better everyday life for people and the planet”.
There are a bunch of great projects –including two wonderful books about ‘Future Food‘ and ‘Urban Futures‘– and an online journal full of interesting essays to discover, but for any creative, I recommend starting with this plea to move beyond human-centered design towards a “people-planet approach” published last year.
Welcome to our library of original guides to the world of typography, which the Google Fonts team is producing in collaboration with typographic experts from around the world. Google Fonts Knowledge enables designers and developers of all skill sets to choose and use type with purpose.
— from Google Fonts Knowledge
I’ve been an admirer of the great (typographic) work¹ of Elliot Jay Stock for quite a while already, so I was thrilled to learn about his recent collaboration on Google Fonts Knowledge. After consulting his blog –like the article series on ‘Advanced web typography’– for years now, this might become my new go-to resource when it comes to web typography.
¹ Amongst other things he created the beautifully designed magazine Lagom, which unfortunately was discontinued after ten issues. I still browse my copies from time to time –not only for the interesting content and the beautiful photography but particularly for layout and typographical inspiration. Even though the Lagom store is offline nowadays, there are apparently still back issues available to buy: There’s a dedicated contact button for this purpose on the about page of elliotjaystocks.com.
Revisiting one of europe’s biggest festivals of creativity during a global pandemic
About six years ago I stumbled upon the OFFF Festival for the very first time. I honestly can’t remember if my wife and I were planning to visit Barcelona again anyway –after our prior trip during La Mercè in 2013– or if the festival itself was the reason to return to Catalonia in the first place. Either way, the years thereafter I made sure to rush for a so-called ‘super early bird ticket’ as soon as they dropped –a year in advance– and then planned a vacation around the date of the event only much later.
Three years in a row I marvelled several of my design heroes and discovered the stunning work of a myriad of creatives previously unknown to me. Buzzing with sheer creativity the festival to me always has been an inspiring melange of motivation (»that shit is fucking amazing, now THAT’S why I want to work in the creative industry in the first place!«) and disillusionment (»that shit is fucking amazing, why is my stuff not THAT great?«), sending me back home with the strong urge to learn more and create better time after time.
In combination with the wonderful Museu del Disseny the festival takes place at, the beloved city of Barcelona all around and the beautiful beaches of Sitges nearby, I found it to be the perfect way to regenerate and recharge my creative batteries. As a consequence, my rather random first attendance at OFFF became a tradition near and dear to my heart and a holiday trip I looked forward to full of joy beforehand every year.
Once two of my colleagues from Wagnerwagner went along and together we wrote about our OFFF experience in-depth –in german– in a series of articles on Medium afterward.
After I had to resell my ticket for 2018 because of a friend’s badly timed wedding, the following year was the first time since my primal attendance in 2015 I didn’t buy a ticket in the first place and skipped the festival intentionally, albeit with a very heavy heart.
All the bigger the anticipation when I bought a ticket –super early bird, of course– for the 20th Anniversary past year and booked a corresponding ten-day trip with my wife shortly after. But you know how 2020 went down eventually.
InOtherWorlds
After rescheduling at first and eventually canceling the event completely last year, its organisers decided to move to the digital space for 2021 from the outset. Even though there were no other real options —hosting a huge event with people from all over the world would’ve been a reckless decision (WTF UEFA?), I was bummed out a bit.
And despite the apparent effort, the team spent on the digital infrastructure in an attempt to make the experience more of a virtual festival than just a series of live streams, the presentations themselves were exactly that in the end.
The admittedly cool entrance to the virtual conference rooms …
… hid a rather underwhelming digital main stage
This is how most of the presentations looked like basically
Sensory reformulation
To make up for it –and probably due to the saved costs thanks to the speakers not traveling– this year’s festival lasted twice as long, taking place over the course of six instead of the usual three days, resulting in a vast amount of presentations. Since the festival happened in May already and I watched as much of the program as possible back then, I am by no means able to recapitulate much of it in great detail anymore.
The good news is that there are some recordings available, so instead of trying to summarize the presentations I’ve watched, I’m going to give you a brief rundown of the ones I remember being especially impressive and/or inspiring for you to watch yourself. Unfortunately, I’m not able to link individual videos here, you have to search for them on the recordings page:
Tendril
Future Deluxe
Alistair Simpson
Studio Dumbar
Saam Gabbay
Omelet
Universal Everything
Joshua Davis
Adam J. Kurtz
Sadly one of my favourite talks, Stefan Sagmeister speaking about art as opposed to design and his wonderful project ‘Beautiful Numbers‘, isn’t available for some reason, similarly to the closing presentation by GMUNK.
The film ultimately focuses on the human condition nested within a cult of robotic shamans called The Vi, and examines the deep emotional connection to loss and rebirth.
GMUNK was presenting some of his astonishing work –which you are able to find online, but in addition, he was talking about a short movie called ‘DECIMA’, which is going to debut at next year’s OFFF. You are able to watch its teaser on Vimeo and I can’t wait to see the final short on the big screen when the festival is going to be held on-site again from 5-7 May 2022. [fingers crossed]
This year’s digital event was an interesting experience with a lot of amazing work on display –as usual, but ultimately there was no chance it could’ve been an adequate substitute for the original face-to-face experience in Barcelona, to be honest.
Ticket sales for next year just have started, guess who got himself an ‘early bird’ ticket already.
Es fehlt ein Verb für die Tätigkeit, die im Halb-Zustand zwischen Programmierung und Gestaltung stattfindet. Es ist beständiges Tasten auf der Suche nach einem angemessenen Gefühl für ein bestimmtes Interface, nach der korrekten Balance aus Physik und Assoziation. Teils ist es Konstruieren, teils räumliches Entwerfen, teils händisches Formen des Materials. In dieser Tätigkeit geht es langsam voran, aber Konstruktion, Gestaltung und inhaltlicher Ausdruck entwickeln sich zugleich, die falsche Trennung der Disziplinen außer acht lassend.
An ode to one of my favourite films and the fading glory of independent movie theaters
Approximately eight years after the cinematic release of Spike Jonze’s Her its lovely, Academy Award-nominated score was finally released on vinyl this month. The ideal occasion to revisit the mellow science fiction movie and, furthermore, reflect on my affection for movie theaters –especially the small, independet ones– a little bit.
Nowadays pop culture is almost obsessed with science fiction stories depicting dark, pessimistic and not seldom cynic visions of a distant future —as if our present timeline in itself wasn’t gruelling enough. Don’t get me wrong, the dominant dystopian colouration isn’t inherently bad or generally unenjoyable;
Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (from 2006) for exampleportrays a society facing extinction in a disturbing vision of an imaginable future. Set in 2027 it’s a chilling sci-fi tale but nonetheless –or perhaps exactly because of this– another one of my all-time favourites and one of very few movies I’ve watched in a cinema twice.
More recently I’ve spent more than 50 hours of total awe in Night City, the grim and gruff yet visually impressive setting of Cyberpunk 2077, without coming even close to the end credits of the well-told computer game.
And yet Her is somewhat of a refreshing misfit in its domain. Jonze ditches the worn out narrativ of the rebel leading a revolt against a suppressing regime, the underdog struggling to survive in a archaic society or the hero fighting the rise of the machines and opts for a slow romance instead.
The film follows Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) whose newfound intimate relationship with an artificial intelligence called OS One (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) helps him come to terms with his ongoing divorce. During the course of their relationship and the more than two hours runtime Samantha, as the Ai names itself, reintroduces the lonely, phlegmatic writer to life and love again.
Evoking nostalgia for the future
But Her isn’t an anomaly of its genre just because of its slow love story, even more it sets itself apart with its atypical and absolutely gorgeous visuals. Production designer K.K. Barret –who also visioned the acclaimed classic Lost In Translation–, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema –who went on to build an insane portfolio by now having shot Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet– and Spike Jonze –who has written, directed and produced the movie– have crafted an artistic masterpiece.
Barret cites the amazing work of Rinko Kawauchi as inspiration for the film’s imagery and her influence is clearly recognisable in the dense atmospheric mood of the movie. The visual vocabulary of the Japanese photographer can be seen in the frequent use of close-ups, the extremly shallow focus and the significant present of natural light as well as the striking key color motif of Her. It casts away the typical bluish, cold colour scheme in favour of a beautiful array of warm pastell tones with a lot of soft pinks and reds.
To archive the desired look the team went trough considerable effort: In order to get the warm light and the intense lense flare inside of Theodor’s apartment for instance, the team abandoned the usual green screen covered windows in order to be able to reflect additional sunlight in through the wide glass facade with giant, helicopter-mounted mirrors.
And it’s not solely the camera and the environment. Monitors in Her emit warm light, too –almost as if blue light filters became the default– and every piece of technology has an inviting, very textural property to it. Especially Theodore’s phone is very different from the bland mass of sleek, predominantly black squares, differenciated only by dimensions and the angle of the rounded edges, we are able to choose from in the current market.
To develop it Jonze and Barret turned to 1940s accessories for inspiration. They went to junk stores searching for handcrafted items like cigarette cases, business card brackets and brass lighters and eventually based the device on an old address book made of aluminum with a leather-embossed shell and inlay.
By combining hardware drawn from the past with very modern, minimalstic, sometimes downright abstract interfaces by graphic designer Geoff McFetridge and additionally banning all contemporary input devices in favour of exclusively voice driven man-machine interaction, Her manages to be nostalgic and futuristic all at the same time.
The devices send out strong retro vibes, yet simultaneous hint at a future in which technology doesn’t have to prove its sophistication anymore but can focus on being part of the personal expression instead.
The underlying concept of a “slight future”, as Jonze put it, extends to multiple other areas of production design, as well:
The wardrobe by costume designer Casey Storm is straight forward and timeless skipping cliché futuristic clothes for an uniform –aside from the colours virtually boring–, 80s inspired aesthetic.
For the scenes taking place outdoor in future Los Angeles the team shot on real locations in L.A. and Shanghai or used a digitally composed melange of both metropolises, particularly to increase the number of the skyscrapers in the background of Los Angeles.
The very little advertising visible in those scenes consists of nice slow motion clips, which are hardly recognisable as advertising and almost undecipherable from an contemporary point of view.
As a result of the cumulated design decisions Her doesn’t feel like a distant, far fetched future, but more like an alternative, way more photogenic reality of our present —which was, technically speaking, the future when he movie was created in 2013. It’s a genius concept preventing the film from becoming dated anytime soon, the reason Jonze and Barret don’t show any cars, by the way. Their total abstinence adds to the city feeling outlandish and therefore futuristic to us even from today’s view.
In line with the thoughtout, astonishing visuals, indie rock band Arcarde Fire and composer Owen Pallett have crafted the perfect musical backdrop —for the love story as well as for the idea of a “slight future”. The beautiful, timeless score somehow sounds kind of synthetic, but you can clearly sense the human touch caused by the traditional instruments at the same time and listening to it on vinyl significantly strengthen that feeling.
Attention! There might be some slight Spoilers from here on out, even though I mean to not ruin anything essential. But if you haven’t seen the movie and want to be absolutely sure not to learn anything more about the plot, skipp to the last part (‘The past is just a story we tell ourselves’) to read some closing thoughts about movie theaters.
Ghost in the machine
Underneath the calm love story and the cozy design, Her deals with some existential thoughts. On a superficial level it presents an optimistic outlook on technology and a society not at war but absolutely in peace with its technology most of the time neatly tucked away in the background.
And yet Theodore suffers from loneliness and isolation, problems all too familiar in our hyperconnected world as well. There’s a symptomatic scene, where he breaks down on a public staircase, completely unseen by the other pedestrians which are all focusing on their devices, taking no notice of the crumbled man. Everyone is technically connected, but there’s this deep disconnect beneath.
There is this utopic world, everything is nice and everything is comfortable, yet even in this world where you are seemingly getting everything you need and having this nice life, there’s still loneliness and longing and isolation and disconnection. … everything is getting nicer as the years go and there is more design and more convinience and our technology is making things easier but there’s still this lonileness.
Spike Jonze in an interview about Her
By moving the relationship with an artificial intelligence to the center of the plot, Her manages to make a strong point for the value of human connections at the same time.
While depicting Theodor on the relatable search for his place in the universe, Jonze conveys important subtext on the topic of purpose: We are here to love, not only in a romantic sense, but through all human relationships. We are all part of this metaphysical world, moving through spacetime together.
I think at its very core the movie almost casually explores what it means to be human and thereby urges the audience to seize every shared moment.
Amy : You know what, I can over think everything and find a million ways to doubt myself. And since Charles left I’ve been really thinking about that part of myself and I’ve just come to realize, that we’re only here briefly. And while I’m here, I wanna allow myself joy.
Besides the very human themes it touches, Her is –alongside Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (from 2014)– one of the best pop-cultural films about artificial intelligence I’ve ever seen.
It gives attentive viewers the most subtle, most accessible interpretation of a central concept known as technological singularity, which describes the point in time technological growth becomes uncontrollable for humans. Roughly outlined, it marks the moment artificial intelligence exceeds human intelligence, resulting in self-aware machines and a dramatic shift in the hierarchy on the planet, ultimately leading to irreversible changes to civilisation and probably the end of humanity itself —at least as the most powerfull species on earth.
Theodore : Where were you? I couldn’t find you anywhere. Samantha : I shut down to update my software. We wrote an upgrade that allows us to move past matter as our processing platform. Theodore : We? We who? Samantha : Me and a group of OSes.
In science-fiction the moment of singularity generally is accompanied by doomsday, but in Her it arrives quietly and secretly during a emotionally charged conversation, well covered by the touching hardships of a struggling relationship.
It’s impossible to know if or when progress will lead to a technological singularity in reality, but Jonze offers a preview how it may look like if it happens eventually. We witness the takeover first-hand and it’s not accompanied by a big bang, it happens politely and perfectly naturally, which makes it dauntingly plausible, and thus even more menacing. At least if you don’t miss the brief moment and the very subtle threat because of the emotional story or the beautiful imagery.
Theodore : You seem like a person, but you’re just a voice in a computer. Samantha : I can understand how the limited perspective of an unartificial mind might perceive it that way. You’ll get used to it.
The past is just a story we tell ourselves
Recently the 93nd Academy Award ceremony was held in Los Angeles and there’s a funny little coincidence in this regard: 2013, the year Her was released, also happens to be the first year a Netflix feature was nominated for an Oscar. Eight year later the streaming service had obtained 35 nominations across 17 different films.
I’m well aware that the past year in cinema wasn’t very impressive, but to me it seems like the Academy, once fierce advocate of the traditional cinema, turned away from movie theaters at a particularly challenging time. I think it speaks volumes that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, a prime example of an visionary movie clearly made for ‘the big screen’, was nominated in only two of the minor categories.
To be fair, the academy has again and again failed to recognize great movies properly in the past –Nicolas Winding Refn’s masterpiece Drive (from 2011) scored one measly nomination for example–, yet I’m troubled by the imminent paradigm shift.
Like most of my favourite films, I’ve seen Her in a movie theater first and I have no doubt I owe my love for the medium to a large extend to the fond memories collected in cinema through the years.
The earliest film I still carry in my heart: The Lion King —my very first visit to a movie theater in 1994. My favourite ongoing film series: James Bond —since I went to watch The World Is Not Enough with Pierce Brosnan, who is still my favourite 007 incarnation. The first time I was truly charmed by a 3D movie: Pina —Wim Wenders’ documentary about the contemporary dance choreographer Pina Bausch. One of the first dates with my now wife: Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris —nervous in a couple seat.
Or one of the weirdest movie moments I’ll never forget: Watching a shirtless James Franco with dreadlocks and metal teeth perform ‘Everytime’ by Britney Spears on a white piano by the pool, three girls in swimwear with pink unicorn facemasks and shotguns dancing around while the sun goes down, cut against scenes of their robberies.
Since you probably want to know what the hell I’m talking about now, here you go. Imagine beeing hit by this sequence totally unprepared in a cinema, if you can.
I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience — and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer. That is the power of cinema …
Andrei Tarkovsky
Those kind of moments are by no means exclusive to me, but I’m pretty sure they are exclusive to movie theaters. Some home theaters may have cought up on a technical level, but I think it’s not an equal experience and it honestly can’t be. To me movie theaters remain to be sacred venues, cathedrals of filmmaking and portals to other worlds.
I do stream a lot of content myself, too –in our household we have Prime, Netflix and Disney– and there’s great, sometimes even cinematic material (Stranger Things, Dark, The Mandalorian), but still it’s different. Can you imagine the energy those projects would’ve eject when experienced in a movie theater? I like watching movies from the comfort of the couch a lot, but I madly love going to the cinema.
For now I’m in good company, though. This month one of our local independent cinemas is celebrating its 110th year of runtime, making it one of the oldest movie theaters across the whole country. Reportedly it has only been closed down for an extended period three times in all those years: First because of hyperinflation in 1922-23, later because of World War II and now because of the damn pandemic.
And no other german city has a higher rate of per capita visits to a movie theater than my hometown, so I’m surely not the only one around here eagerly waiting for the big screen to light up again. Hopefully for many more gems like Her.
The Accessibility Developer Guide is an initiative of Access for all, Swiss Foundation for technology adapted to people with disabilities.…The vision behind the Accessibility Developer Guide is to bridge the gap between providers of websites and users with special needs.
The Accessibility Developer Guide addresses a very important, but unfortunately often neglected component of website and web application design. Based on the experience of users with special needs as well as the knowledge of experienced web developers it provides help with the setup of tools, the basic knowledge needed for development, and code examples to get things started.
We shape our tools and our tools shape us. We are a product of our world and our world is made of things. Things we use, things we love, things we carry with us and the things we make. We are the product of our world, but we are also its designer. Design is the choices we make about the world we want to live in. … When we are gone, all that’s left of us is what we’ve made. The things you and I make may not leave a visible footprint on the earth, but everything we make takes up space, creates noise, competes for attention. What do we want to spend more time with? What do we want to shape us? What nurishes us? What do we want to see grow? I think we all have an idea. I think we all have something we want to make for no other reason than we want it to exist. Something small but meaningful. … Things that nudge the world a little bit in what we hope is the right direction. We got to put a dent in the universe. This is a great job.
… a starting point for a more expansive, and more critical discourse on website design. The engagement of liberal arts, humanities and engineering present in the architectural discourse is more timely than ever. Considering and expanding upon these aspects when building and critiquing websites may help us fulfilling our responsibility as contributors to the global digital infrastructure today.
A very interesting and quite different approach to thinking of web design as architecture. It actually makes complete sense considering the ten associated statements by Malte Müller, though. Definitely, something to keep in mind for future online projects.
