"these fragments i have shored against my ruins": modernism, post-modernism, and...

John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”: Modernism,

Post-Modernism, and Responsive Web Design

About Me

• 1998: PhD in American Literature

About Me

• Diss: “Confronting Modernity: Urbanization and American Literature 1880-1930”

About Me

• 1999-Present: Web developer, CMS consultant, UX director, Project Manager, Agency Director

About Me

• Current: CEO at 10up

About Me

• Current: CEO at 10up • (Yes, we are hiring)

“Now is the time for the medium of the web to outgrow its origins in the printed page. . . . It is the nature of the web to be flexible, and it should be our role as designers and developers to embrace this flexibility . . . The journey begins by letting go of control, and becoming flexible.”

What happened in between these two

publications?

“Creating Killer Web Sites was the first true design book for the Web. It became the best-

selling book on the Internet in 1996 and has been translated

into ten languages. It has taught an entire generation of

site designers how to get control over their pages”

Why do we so resist the digital nature of the web?

Walter Benjamin!

“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Reproducibility)” 1936

“that which withers in the age of mechanical

reproduction is the aura of the work of art . . . the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced

object from the domain of tradition”

What is the work of design, in the age of digital reproduction?

Prologue

The White CityChicago World’s Fair 1893

- Daniel Burnham, Master of Works for the Chicago World’s Fair

“Make no Little Plans . . . Make big plans . . . remembering that a noble, logical diagram once

recorded will never die . . . Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty”

Modernism

Modernism“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind”

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)

ModernismTurning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, . . .

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? - Yeats, “The Second Coming” 1919

- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land 1922

I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih

Modernism

“To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.”

Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (1982)

Post-Modernism

Tryin’ to keep it real (compared to what)1969: Gene McDaniels composition, recorded by Les McCann & Eddie Harris, protests Nixon and the war in Vietnam.

2003: “Real Compared to What” stars Mya and Common selling Coca Cola, “The Real Thing”

Mo vs Po-mo• Things Fall Apart / All that is

solid melts into air

• Mourning lost authenticity

• If only we could reassert a master narrative

• Clear distinction between “high” and “low” culture

• Aesthetic formalism

• It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

• Authenticity is a lie, a trap

• Distrust of master narratives

• Blurring of lines between “high” and “low” / “art” and “commerce”

• Pastiche, collage, parody, irony, self-referentiality, simulacra

Responsive Web Design is more than a set of techniques: it is a push, to force us out of the collective hallucination of fixed-web design

Responsive Web Design• RWD can’t just mean

producing three comps where we used to do one (mobile, tablet, desktop)

• We need to balance the clients’ desire for control with a realistic sense of device proliferation and the appropriate ebb and flow

• Stop trying to make the web back into a new print

Stop controlling, start designing

• Design from content out

• Design for fluidity & device independence - grid systems, percentages, responsive typography and imagery

• Move to real interactions (html,css,js) as early as possible / practical (but not before that)

• Semantic markup and progressive enhancement FTW!

Epilogue: Control is an Expensive and Dangerous

Illusion

The White City• Henry Howard Holmes,

“America’s first serial killer,” designed and built a hotel to prey upon primarily young women who came to visit or work at the fair

• See Erik Larsen, The Devil in the White City, 2003

The White City• Henry Howard Holmes,

“America’s first serial killer,” designed and built a hotel to prey upon primarily young women who came to visit or work at the fair

• See Erik Larsen, The Devil in the White City, 2003

Questions?

"these fragments i have shored against my ruins": modernism, post-modernism, and...

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