Terrible title eh? That aside there's something that's been floating around my head for a bit to do with our current concern of supporting so many platforms for our digital content. I'm starting at a bit of a tangent so bear with me…
I remember going to a retrospective of the artist Carl Andre, best known for his minimalist sculptures, usually based around patterns of geometric shapes. Andre also produces poems & drawings, some of which were also displayed at the show. Here's a few examples:
Looking at all of these works together you could see that in a way, as much as physical work, Andre is producing a language describing how he sees the world.
To Andre, it seems the poems, drawings and sculpture were all just mediums in which to show this way of seeing.
I think there's a lesson in this for us in digital production. People harp on about One web and then clients & your team all panic about producing 2 million versions of one thing that all have the same 'look & feel'.
To quote from the W3C (see above 'One web' link):
One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same representation across all devices. The context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation.
Look back at Andre's drawings, poems and sculpture. They have the same feel but their visual is as much a product of their medium as a representation of a 'look'. They work not because they are all minimal geometric shapes but because they made with the same language.
I think people get that content will be different when they are looking at it through a different medium. I think they will forgive a hell of a lot more visual difference than we think. What they will spot straight away is one thing trying to be another, which just feels fake.
No comments:
Post a Comment