Walter Benjamin and Ways of Seeing: "Nomadic Colors" on The Web?
BlogLESS, writings on design restraint, brought up a very interesting application of our friend Walt Benjamin's ideas on the reproduction of art in contemporary society. The article, entitled "Colors for Nomadic Experiences," cautions web designers to be "mindful of the wide variety of contexts that your website is viewed in provides welcome occasion to practice restraint."
The Breakdown:
According to Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, modern means of reproduction enable mass production and consumption of images. Today, that basically means The Internet. If we accept that our designs can be seen in any browser by any one with any size screen and any color desktop background, then we must consider a broad range on contexts when making color choices as designers.
Here is a really interesting visual example in BlogLESS of the red tones used by Google set against various colored browsers and backgrounds.
In addition, the ideas of John Berger, author of landmark book Ways of Seeing, are brought into the conversation. Especially his observations of viewing paintings in various environments, as expressed in his original BBC Television series in 1972.
For more, check out Episode One of Ways of Seeing with John Berger. The graphics are rather silly, but the content remains relevant:
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