What and who is the web?
Thoughts on "Vernacular Web 2" by Olia Lialina and "A Rejection of the Term “Vernacular” by Javier Syquia
"Vernacular Web 2" by Olia Lialina
The 21st century has brought with it a drastic shift in how we use the internet and how we choose to design it. Moving from “amateur” graphic design of sparkles, flashing and shifting colors, and comic sans font to a more “clean” design with user experience over visual looks. This shift has also allowed the web to become a space that is so filled with information, creation, and people that it caves in on itself like a blackhole and turns void.
This shift while fun in theory has been described by Olia Lialina in her piece, “Vernacular Web 2” as being much deeper — in truth it comes from a place of amateur vs pro. As web design moved to the forefront of designers interest, websites who didn’t follow ahead in the trend were seen as marks of an amateur designer and seen as immature and gaudy (see: Danah Boyd on Facebook vs Myspace). “The “clean” pages of Facebook stay for design, professionalism, security, better service and upper class.” says Lialina. Although ironically this was before Facebook allowed sparkly glitter profile graphics which were soon added after this was written in 2007.
Lialina’s interest in the glitter wave of the late 2000s particularly excites me as it’s a design aspect that continued in popularity up until 2015, lasting through some of the most drastic web design changes and through the true “big shift” towards minimal web and social media design. I’d say the biggest pioneer of it’s survival was tumblr with it’s use of edgy glittery text gifs; although I definitely taught myself how to make a glittery gif for my signature at the end of a forum post when I was 11 in 2013. It was a good time to be on the internet I’d say.
"A Rejection of the Term “Vernacular” by Javier Syquia
If amateur design is “bad”, does that mean only trained designers can be “good”? As Javier Syquia learned through his design education in the US, the answer in the Western world is yes. Born in the Philippines, Syquia’s experiences of design were based on his life there and bled into his work when studying graphic design in the US. Though, this left him with professors telling him his work was bad and after his explanation and reasoning for his work, professors passive aggressively describing his work as “Vernacular design”. Vernacular as a specific language, or as Syquia found, vernacular as, “belonging to the household, domestic, native” in Latin, “derived from verna “slave born in the household”.
Syquia actively questions the use of vernacular, but also the design choices that the Western education of design pushes. If it doesn’t fit into their box of, “good” than it’s automatically bad; this mindset gives no room for understanding other cultures views of design as Syquia points out. Not to mention that the idea of “good” and “bad” is coming from the white male perspective that perpetrates the Western culture.
“I began to question: why must we categorize designs produced by self-taught designers versus “formally” trained ones? Why does design from my culture, and that of other postcolonial and diasporic contexts, have to be labeled “vernacular” rather than just being understood as graphic design?”