"something extratextual was always going to be conveyed"
November 3, 2022 8:29 AM Subscribe
Maya.land is one of those idiosyncratic personal websites with, for example, a page about heraldry and the Internet. ("Heraldry scales nicely down to avatars.") Maya most recently posted about choosing a new font. "...a lot of what we think we’re perceiving in an artwork or Thing is the part that can be flawlessly reproduced, but the way our minds grab onto it is all about its aura – the origin, the context, the situatedness that a mechanical reproduction wouldn’t duplicate."
I miss this era of the web. I think it's due for a comeback.
Typography was kind of my inlet to graphic design in general, which is neat because I've now done graphic design professionally for a hot minute. And the thing that compelled me was exactly what Maya talks about here: it's an incredibly nuanced art form, both because it has so many individual elements even at its simplest and because each of those elements recur a whole bunch, in random rhythms and frequencies, across such a dense block of space that the entire block becomes defined by the precise weight of what you're putting on the page. And it's not enough to just place them to make an impression: they also have to create space in a way that simultaneously lets you focus on each word of a block of text and lets those words create enough visual space when you're looking at other words that the whole thing remains readable.
tl;dr: it's wizardry.
One of my Professional Indulgences is getting really fancy fonts for myself now and again, especially when I can justify using them in a project. I'm doing a passion project up in Inkwell nowadays, and man: it's a challenge to work out how exactly to make it work the way I want it to work, and a joy how immediately it adds character to basically anything I stick it in. Absolutely phenomenal. The rush.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:44 AM on November 3, 2022 [4 favorites]
Typography was kind of my inlet to graphic design in general, which is neat because I've now done graphic design professionally for a hot minute. And the thing that compelled me was exactly what Maya talks about here: it's an incredibly nuanced art form, both because it has so many individual elements even at its simplest and because each of those elements recur a whole bunch, in random rhythms and frequencies, across such a dense block of space that the entire block becomes defined by the precise weight of what you're putting on the page. And it's not enough to just place them to make an impression: they also have to create space in a way that simultaneously lets you focus on each word of a block of text and lets those words create enough visual space when you're looking at other words that the whole thing remains readable.
tl;dr: it's wizardry.
One of my Professional Indulgences is getting really fancy fonts for myself now and again, especially when I can justify using them in a project. I'm doing a passion project up in Inkwell nowadays, and man: it's a challenge to work out how exactly to make it work the way I want it to work, and a joy how immediately it adds character to basically anything I stick it in. Absolutely phenomenal. The rush.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:44 AM on November 3, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is great, I clicked on some of the the banners and ended up joining Neocities.
posted by eckeric at 11:58 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by eckeric at 11:58 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Always happy to see this particular internet subculture appear on the blue. I love that these folks are keeping the dream of the internet alive with their personal sites and linkblogs and casual disregard for the corporate web.
It's a shame Kicks Condor doesn't post regularly anymore since that was a great place to find these kinds of sites and people. indieweb.xyz and href.cool are still plodding along, though.
In my wildest dreams I imagine MeFi adopting some of the indieweb stuff like quotebacks, webmentions, and indieauth.
Anyways, Maya.land is great. There is some really good advice and such for people wanting to dip their toes into places like neocities there. Plus it's just genuinely interesting to click through all of the different articles and interests.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 1:35 PM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
It's a shame Kicks Condor doesn't post regularly anymore since that was a great place to find these kinds of sites and people. indieweb.xyz and href.cool are still plodding along, though.
In my wildest dreams I imagine MeFi adopting some of the indieweb stuff like quotebacks, webmentions, and indieauth.
Anyways, Maya.land is great. There is some really good advice and such for people wanting to dip their toes into places like neocities there. Plus it's just genuinely interesting to click through all of the different articles and interests.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 1:35 PM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't know anything about fonts or design, but that is a lovely font. I particularly like the lowercase G and the way the small caps centre on the caps.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 2:37 PM on November 5, 2022
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 2:37 PM on November 5, 2022
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posted by bigendian at 11:33 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]