The nineteenth century saw an increasing separation between the treatment of the surface and the structure of designed objects. Mass production and a mobile market economy encouraged the production of heavily ornamented yet cheaply fabricated products. Affordable manufacture allowed the burgeoning middle class to acquire “luxury” goods fashioned after objects formerly reserved for an elite.
Put together with odd bits of the useless Clarice, a survivors’ Clarice was taking shape, all huts and hovels, festering sewers, rabbit cages. And yet, almost nothing was lost of Clarice’s former splendor; it was all there, merely arranged in a different order, no less appropriate to the inhabitants’ needs than it had been before.
The idea of overlap, ambiguity, multiplicity of aspect, and the semilattice are not less orderly than the right tree, but more so. They represent a thicker, tougher, more subtle and more complex view of structure.
Most objects which we are accustomed to call beautiful, such as a painting or a tree, are single-purpose things, in which, through long development or the impress of one will, there is an intimate, visible linkage from fine detail to total structure.
The resistant virtues of the structure that we make depend on their form; it is through their form that they are stable and not because of an awkward accumulation of materials. There is nothing more noble and elegant from an intellectual viewpoint than this; resistance through form.
I’ve noticed a recent trend on the web — or at least, on the parts of it I’ve visited. Maybe you’ve noticed it too.
Here’s what happens: you’re on a website, and one of these little prompts pops up...[to] let you know that there’s an app, and that the website you’re on...well, it’s not quite the app, is it?
...Sometimes, the website wants me to install the app — no, it needs me to install the app. It’s like a paywall, but for apps. An appwall.
In recent years, these prompts have gotten more prominent, and occasionally impassable. And I think that trend’s interesting. Why would a company promote a native app over their perfectly usable website?
It feels like a glimpse into that company’s design priorities. And it’s possibly providing us with insight into the business value they place on the open web — a medium that’s meant to be accessible everywhere, on any screen, on any device.
And it really does feel like these glimpses are becoming more common.