Discourse in web design An Essay by Jason Santa Maria v5.jasonsantamaria.com A website is its own, singular thing. We know it isn’t a book, a TV show, a film, or a song, but our language is limited to talking about it in those restrictive boxes. A website is a mix of all of those things, and none of those things. It is influenced by place and time. A website changes with age. It can evolve and regress. It was then I wondered if the problem wasn’t that web design lacked its own Emigré. What if we actually lacked a shared language to critically discuss web design? Art, architecture, and even graphic design, have critics and historians that give context to new work through the lenses of culture and important work from the past. wwwcritique
What can be put into words It is not evident, though many people, from the early Greeks on, implicitly act as if it were true, that all things, whatsoever they may be, can be put into words—you could talk about anything: the gods, truth, beauty, and justice. But if you consider what happens in a music concert, then it is obvious that what is transmitted to the audience cannot be put into words—if it could, then the composer and musicians would probably have used words. All the music critics to the contrary, what music communicates cannot (apparently) be put into words. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, for painting. Poetry is a curious field where words are used but the true content of the poem is not in the words! Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn Everything that can be saidWhereof one cannot speak