In Progress: Study of Digital Writing Spaces — Visit project journal »
“Cyberspace is composed of a variety of social media — email, mailing lists, listservers, bulletin boards, chat rooms, multi-user domains (MUDs), virtual worlds, game spaces — that support social interaction between people who are geographically dislocated. Many commentators now view the fostering of social interaction as the most significant aspect of cyberspace. Indeed, there is no denying that these social media are used every day and inhabited by millions of people talking, discussing, arguing, flirting, playing, and chatting with one another.” — Atlas of Cyberspace
The internet provides a challenging environment for language. Its culture is constantly changing as the individual and collective denizens of the web latch onto rapidly occurring memes that present new opportunities to experiment with words. One example of this would be the lolspeak, which appears to be poorly written English but in actuality requires an intimate knowledge of the language in order to convincingly rearrange and misuse verbs, gerunds, prepositional phrases and syntax.
This study of the digital writing space is an ongoing endeavour to better understand how language is used online. Starting from how we communicate through verbal and vocal language, my research will cover areas in typography, language, online identity, writing spaces and ephemera.
DesignThe.ory: How does design theory inform design practice? — Visit project website »
DesignThe.ory was created in response to a question: in what ways can design theory inform design practice? It was a question asked of me as part of the course criteria for my Masters, and one of our first assignments. I had arrogantly assumed that the answer would be easy given I am nerdy, bookish and love theory. But I underestimated the scope of the question. And every week when I presented what I thought was an answer, more questions arose. What I initially thought was an easy question become quite unanswerable.
Firstly, theory is a completely abstract notion. In my mind, I can rationalise theory as being historic and technical — all skills are measured by our ability to apply them within an established context (or by breaking the established rules). But in another designer’s mind, theory is completely rational and unchangeable. And in another designer’s mind, theory is about geometry and mathematics. And in another designer’s mind, theory is psychology and colour. And in another designer’s mind, theory is being able to recite all the web safe fonts in alphabetical order.
