Design Observer: writings about design & culture
When Lialina writes about what she calls the “Starry Night Background,” a popular web design conceit of the mid-90s, it’s hard not to feel a tinge of nostalgia. I haven’t seen a web page use a tiled jpeg of outer space as its background image in years, and, seeing one again helped me remember how excited I was about the internet when I first started to use it, how limitless it seemed. Still, as captivating as it may be, Lialina reminds us that it is basically impossible to put type on such dense constellations, and points out that these backgrounds aren’t, in fact, really appropriate for anything. “Scientific texts, personal home pages, cinema programs, pathfinder image galleries, it’s always wrong.” As the web became more ’serious’ and ‘designed’, starry backgrounds began to disappear.
But why? Graphic designers relish the constraints and pre-existing rules that govern most off-line mediums. Typically, too, they share a deep engagement with vernacular typography, from painted signs to punk flyers. So why did we so willingly annihilate the clumsy, yet oddly charming (and pervasive) graphic language that came built-in to the early web? If anyone is equipped to solve the problem of how to effectively use a starry night background, it’s graphic designers. (Read More)
