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A shift in thinking about the Web as a unique medium distinct from print, photography, traditional graphic design, film, television, and video, will inevitably compel practical changes in Web design. While it is impossible to predict what the Web will be like in five years, I will predict that in five years we will see the emergence of a new generation of Web artists whose thinking will be free because they will not remember a time when there was no Web. It may be one of the few mediums they know from a designer’s perspective, and they will speak HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, and StyleSheets as fluently as their first language. There will be a further stratification of Web professionals as there is now: the majority will be relative novices who rely on WYSIWYG applications, while those true Web artists who are fluent with their medium will be in a strong minority. Most art and design schools will not stress the importance of coding for the Web artist, but this new paradigm of the Web professional will emerge nonetheless.
However, we don’t have to wait five years to see examples of Web design that exhibits this new paradigm. Right now there are a few artists who are thinking about the Web in new and different ways.
One example is artist Douglas Miller. Miller’s style appears to have grown out of the layered multimedia movement of the mid-1990s that was centered around the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, but he has taken the aesthetic of layering to a new level. On the Web he has combined his image layering aesthetic with a Cartesian grid-based approach to page layout design.
Miller’s aesthetic is typified in his personal portfolio site. A large duotoned background image employs layered abstract designs while vertical linestrokes form the division between the navigation and the splash imagery. The focal point of the design is an almost ethereal Apple iBook floating in blue space and seemingly in the crosshairs of the viewer’s sight. Upon entering his site a JavaScript pop-up window appears, divided up by frames. Only Miller has cleverly assimilated the look and feel of the browser into his own design, so that the user experiences what appears to be a browser application that has been customized for Miller’s own use. Buttons are very Netscape-like in their appearance and in their rollover behaviors, and the bottom status bar has been replaced with Apple’s “Think Different” slogan and the name of the artist. The splash graphic in the middle of the screen exhibits the layering aesthetic that Miller has carried to perfection, where diverse graphical elements and text individually float in chaos yet together form a cohesive and eye-catching work of art.
Another prime example by Miller is the MSI Media site. The interface for this site is formed by a series of intersecting circles which visually do not seem very grid-like at all. However, Miller has constructed his design using a complex set of HTML tables which organize the layout into a Cartesian grid. What you are looking at is not one image but many images that fit seamlessly together like a puzzle. Within the individual puzzle-pieces, Miller has once again used his trademark layering aesthetic as colors, lines, and typography overlap to to create the artistic form of the design. While this site may appear simple at first, there is a lot of complexity going into this design on a couple of levels. There is the complexity of the layered images, and there is the complexity of the interlocking image pieces within an HTML table structure. Clicking into the portfolio section of the MSI Media site, Miller has once again utilized a JavaScript pop-up window in order to excercise control over the size and appearance of the browser. The use of the Cartesian grid in this layout design is more apparent, as there is a banner-sized box at the top of the page containing the corporate identity, and a series of square buttons at the bottom of the page utilizing colored table cells and hypertext links. In the center is another intricate composite of images, colors, and typography that include marketing messages as well as abstract design that catches the eye. Miller’s free use of typography is an important graphical element in his designs. The fact that the text is being appropriated for graphical use rather than for strict reading give’s Miller’s designs an almost irreverent attitude while still retaining a level of professionalism in the execution.
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