"These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins": Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Responsive Web Design

Back in 2000, A List Apart published John Allsop’s “A Dao of Web Design,” which argued that “It is the nature of the web to be flexible, and it should be our role as designers and developers to embrace this flexibility.” In 2010, Ethan Marcotte’s “Responsive Web Design” picked up Allsop’s call and modernized it, connecting the call to “embrace this flexibility” to a specific historical change (the tidal wave of mobile web usage) and a set of techniques for contemporary markup.

What is it about the process of design that struggles so mightily to embrace the chaos? Why do otherwise digitally savvy publishers, editors, designers, and developers have such difficulty letting go? Is there an inherent conflict between “digital” and “design”?

This talk takes the philosophical and literary-historical shift/tension between modernism and post-modernism and looks for signs that might help us understand the shifting sands under our own digital feet.

Transcript

1. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 “These fragments I have shored against my ruins”: Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Responsive Web Design
2. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 About Me
3. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 About Me • 1998: PhD in American Literature
4. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 About Me • 1998: PhD in American Literature • Diss: “Confronting Modernity: Urbanization and American Literature 1880-1930”
5. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 About Me • 1998: PhD in American Literature • Diss: “Confronting Modernity: Urbanization and American Literature 1880-1930” • 1999-Present: Web developer, CMS consultant, UX director, Project Manager, Agency Director
6. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 About Me • 1998: PhD in American Literature • Diss: “Confronting Modernity: Urbanization and American Literature 1880-1930” • 1999-Present: Web developer, CMS consultant, UX director, Project Manager, Agency Director • Current: CEO at 10up
7. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 About Me • 1998: PhD in American Literature • Diss: “Confronting Modernity: Urbanization and American Literature 1880-1930” • 1999-Present: Web developer, CMS consultant, UX director, Project Manager, Agency Director • Current: CEO at 10up • (Yes, we are hiring)
8. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 “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.”
9. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
10. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
11. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 What happened in between these two publications?
12. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 “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”
13. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
14. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
15. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Why do we so resist the digital nature of the web?
16. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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”
17. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 What is the work of design, in the age of digital reproduction?
18. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Prologue
19. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 The White City Chicago World’s Fair 1893
20. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 The White City Chicago World’s Fair 1893
21. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 The White City Chicago World’s Fair 1893
22. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 The White City Chicago World’s Fair 1893
23. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 - 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”
24. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Modernism
25. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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)
26. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Modernism Turning 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
27. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 - 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
28. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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)
29. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Post-Modernism
30. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
31. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
32. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
33. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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”
34. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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
35. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
36. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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
37. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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
38. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
39. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
40. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Stop controlling, start designing
41. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Stop controlling, start designing • Design from content out
42. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Stop controlling, start designing • Design from content out • Design for fluidity & device independence - grid systems, percentages, responsive typography and imagery
43. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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)
44. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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!
45. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Epilogue: Control is an Expensive and Dangerous Illusion
46. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
47. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
48. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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
49. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 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
50. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
51. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014 Questions?