saturn town

sketching with rectangles: digital tenancy in a hostile world

under #web design, #ideas

i have a directory on my pc, /home/hermit/web/sketch/. every so often, i create a subfolder with the date, and begin a scratchpad of html/css, maybe some js, maybe even some php1. i find that this method of noodling is often faster for me than drawing in eg. photoshop or an alternative graphics program, then reproducing in html+css.

in the past, a common pattern for constructing web designs from a PSD was to “slice” the psd into various layers/rectangles, perhaps with repeating, tiling sections for borders etc., exporting them as individual images and stitching them back together with CSS. this modality has stuck with me: though it is no longer so popular to design in this way2, today, i am still compartmentalizing visions of layout as layers of rectangles. there’s satisfaction in balancing a composition with good, measured proportion.

this can often act as a form of creative diary; at least for this medium. i have a few dozen dated sketch folders, and each one reflects an idea i was processing at that time. all are unfinished; that’s why i use the term “sketch” - but some are severely so. even still, i try to get the essence of the idea down so i can reference it at a later time when i have a more complete design idea in mind.

i don’t do it so actively anymore, but some of my favorite web things to create are what i would call toys. not quite games, but maybe a little more than toys - novelties3, i suppose, where there is an experience to be had. i am especially interested in such novelties where users may interact with others through modes of communication, usually text-based and with disparate rates of exchange eg. over time or with a sense of distance/discovery.

these sorts of projects, when they actually do take off, can harbor a sense of community and make things feel a little less empty and a little less small.

exploring the world of web design & devlopment has given me an excellent creative outlet. i have met fascinating people, who have become friends, through the internet; many only through the personal web.

to carve out a space for myself, if only digital, is meaningful.

–hermit

  1. PHP can be served with its built in webserver by running php -S localhost:port from the directory the project files exist in, or using php -S localhost:port -t /path/to/project/ from elsewhere. be sure to substitute “port” for the port on which you wish to run; i use 3000. avoid http/s ports 80 and 443 as this should never be a production server. less frequently, i run php -S 0.0.0.0:3000 so that the site can be accessible from other devices on the LAN. ↩

  2. surely many websites in the Golden Age of Web Design section of the Web Design Museum started as stitched-together PSDs. this graphic-heavy style is a favorite of mine. ↩

  3. this post has been formatted as such a novelty as an entry for 32bit.cafe’s community code jam #3. this post was written over the course of the jam dates. view it here. ↩