January 21, 2000

12:12 AM

Me + 2 hours of boredom = possible MetaFilter redesign. I was thumbing through this book on my shelf and got inspired. I don't know if it will work with the text-heavy posts though. Maybe with some tweaking, I could get it working. After I get the archives working, I'm going to allow for different page designs in the preferences.
posted by mathowie (7 comments total)

Matt,

Stuff done in imitation communist propaganda is interesting, IMHO. Would look really good in a weblog like MF.
But be different - steer away from Soviet stuff, and go for Chinese or Korean or something.....not much of that about that I've seen.
posted by tomcosgrave at 4:09 AM on January 21, 2000

I like the idea a lot (although I think you lose some legibility over the loyal party worker), and (in a suprising disagreement with tomcosgrave) think that "People's Weblog" == SOVIET, rather than communist. I have a great love for the heavily industrial soviet propaganda posters (using something like East Bloc as a title font), so perhaps I'm biased. You GO Comrade!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:40 AM on January 21, 2000

As an aside - I've done several departmental memos/fliers as Soviet Propaganda posters lately - so far, nobody seems to get the subtext.

posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:43 AM on January 21, 2000

Joe - surprising disagreement? :-)

Actually I did do one Soviet banner for Jeffrey Zeldman and the WaSP - it's down the end of this page.

I don't agree with the comment that the Peoples Weblog is Soviet - the Chinese Communists were very into work as well, under mao especially.


posted by tomcosgrave at 11:36 AM on January 21, 2000

Ehhh, when I say work I mean agriculture (that was the Mao bit - the Great Leap Forward).

It could work with that - the workers of the weblog trying to bring in a harvest? :-)
posted by tomcosgrave at 11:37 AM on January 21, 2000

"No Hammer. Just Sickle."

Fair enough, the Agrarian proletariat. I guess I was just visualizing the heavily industrial posters common to the Stalinistas.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 3:10 PM on January 21, 2000

I went to an exhibition of the Stenberg brothers work last year... very inspiring. So yes, a propagandist Metafilter would be great.
Chyovelek's a nice cyrillic inspired font which would work on it, and so is De Stijl, Kraft und Still (both from P22) and Kiloton by Kees Gajentaan (which I use on prolific.org)
posted by prolific at 3:43 PM on January 21, 2000