Graphic Design

by JS

I started blogging the summer before I went to college after reading an article in Time magazine that included, among other things, a bit about the rise in popularity of the proto-blogging platform Open Diary. A lot about my early history with computers is sort of fuzzy these days, but my progression through a cross-section of blogging platforms (Open Diary, Blogger, WordPress) has been oddly consistent. In terms of the amateur experience of posting words on the internet for no good reason, I’ve seen it all. And in retrospect, this really isn’t the best use of my time.

That is to say I don’t really get anything concrete out of this crazy process of hanging out in the long tail devoting energy here that ought to be spent elsewhere. It is, in pretty much the purist sense, strictly a hobby. Sometimes we get to choose our hobbies. Sometimes hobbies choose us. But one of the upsides of toiling away at a useless website is that in the process I end up exposed to some areas and ideas that I might not have anything to do with otherwise. I’m almost exactly the opposite of an artistic person. I can’t draw, paint, or handle myself in any artistic act involving actual tools. I was that kid in 5th grade whose diorama looked like shit.

But even really amateur bloggers like myself intersect issues of graphic design right up front. How do we want our blog to look? What theme is best? We get to make a critical judgment about a design issue that we wouldn’t have if we didn’t have this crazy obsession. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot more about the problems of design on the web, driven in part by my own crazy obsession with this website, and in part by the natural need to think outside of one’s own narrow focus, just to flex a different mental muscle every once and awhile.