Consider the pluralities and multiplicities of web-weaving: the more websites and worlds there are, the more environments we can choose to immerse ourselves in. The act of creating a website is an act of agency and expression.
(Chia)
See also: website inspiration, digital commons, cozy software, the garden and the stream
On Website Redesigns
In other words, a website creator becomes both author and architect simultaneously. There are endless possibilities as to what a website could be. What kind of room is a website? Or is a website more like a house? A boat? A cloud? A garden? A puddle?
Whatever it is, there’s potential for a self-reflexive feedback loop: when you put energy into a website, in turn the website helps form your own identity.” —Laurel Schwulst
About every half a year, I get an intense urge to redesign my website. Some years I overhaul everything, ripping out the content and gutting the divs and p tags. Other years, I make only minor changes, giving it a fresh coat of paint and changing out old typography for new ones.
I find it hard to place a finger on exactly why I feel this way. The colours, font spacing, and content — they don’t feel ‘me’. How did something that used to feel so perfect and intimate feel so alien and off-kilter?
Our digital artifacts and spaces are reflections of our real selves. We feel like we outgrow digital spaces just as we change, learn, and grow in real life.
In part, this is why I think having your own little plot on the internet to change and modify at your own whim is worth protecting. This is our last little bit of land in an era where we leave our wizardly powers to build worlds of our choosing at the door of digital giants.
Think about it: there’s no way to make a web page or a blog that is not an act of playing with its form at the same time as you’re creating its content. So it just seemed natural: the world was always telling me that you worked on those two things – the container and its contents – together. (Robin Sloan on websites and notes)
See also: cozy software
Hundertwasser flavour of design
- The resident has access to the same tools as the architect.
- Everything is writeable, everything is rewriteable.
- People can solve their own problems.
As shared journey
What if we could create and share journeys we’ve taken across the internet, with the sights we’ve seen and the rocks we’ve collected attached?
As location
Located at a point in physical space and cyberspace, a website posits a place of being designated for dwelling and use. We encounter a website at a physical site, engaging it at its own site.
As home
Stumbling upon these websites was a bit like walking into their physical house, leaving your shoes by the door and, glass in hand, taking a peek at the spines of their books, their record collection, the picture frames on the wall, or the tidbits they displayed on the sideboard.
As for the website itself, it focuses on the person first, the occupation second (a philosophy Nick Cave explained much more beautifully).