Websites styled as a sheet of paper on a long scrolling desktop make for an uncomfortable ride. Inverting the desk by 90 degrees to have it display on a screen invokes an odd, gravity defying, sensation of queasiness. Making a site that resembles a virtual work area by wrapping every part of it in heavy physical metaphor dulls the mind as it repeatedly bangs its head against the outer extremities of literalness.
The desk is usually styled in one of two ways. First is the tidy workspace, second is the untidy one. The first has hard, heavily grained wood between the <body> tags. Paper is laid square in the centre with a hint of drop shadow, the font is most likely Courier to replicate a type writer. Second is a lighter wood and has a separate <header> image probably with mugs, pens, keys and coffee stains. The paper may have a rough edge to indicate a tear and mostly likely one of the corners is dog-eared. Again, there is a hint of drop shadow. Items in the sidebar tend to be represented by post-it notes. There will also be liberal use of a file called paperclip.png and the font should be Comic Sans, but isn’t.
Both desk types are intended to be representative of a singular and private space. A space where the author is shooting from the hip while simultaneously being the place they slave over their masterpiece – a space where the magic happens. Occasionally there will be a polished gem, but your semiotic spider sense should be warning you that this is a site by someone who likes to show their working. You will have a long wait.
My suggestion is that you leave your desk, that you stretch your legs and that you go outside, metaphorically off course. The great expanses of nature, the sky; the sea and the sweeping meadow don’t replicate so well on the internet. Even when tiled to infinity they are flattened and not remotely romantic. The wild unpredictable patterns of nature are contained within a repeated .jpg Photoshopped with a 50% offset. That said, they have their own kind of kaleidoscopic beauty that abstracts and orders in equal measure. Take a deep breath, loose yourself in nature, download it here.
Bg_img Hollo
I was asked by Andrea Magnani to create a piece of work for a new project of his called Hollo, a website hosting a collection of designs to be printed, on demand, to pieces of furniture. This is it. This edition of Bg_img takes the form of a piece of furniture.
The pattern for this design is a collage of the background gradients of more than 50 websites. The gradient background image is a .jpg typically 1 or 2 pixels wide and approaching a thousand long, repeated along the x-axis. It is also approaching the status of anomaly; it would be in danger of extinction were it not for the garish non-compliant CSS quirks of Internet Explorer. Where otherwise the background image has become more refined, shifting from early rough textures and garish psychedelia to the smoother, more polished surface of the gradient, the gradient itself – the high waterline of Modernism and web-design – is in the process of being usurped by a few lines of CSS code. This Bg_img acts as monument and archive to the gradient as both object and ornament.