Frank Chimero, The Web's Grain
I believe that we often see the web as limitless, because it’s so abstract
to most of us that we can’t even perceive it as an object, as material.
But in spite of this conception, we find a lot of consistency in the web.
This is because, even though differently, everyone is using the same
material. The problem is that, as people try to develop more sophisticated
and innovative, eye-catching websites, they often lose perspective of what
really makes a website, a website.
Like in David Hockney’s story, you must not be blinded by experty and take a step
back to look at the whole picture. Here’s an example. You want to make the best
pasta. You have great tools, the best ingredients and the best chefs. You start
experimenting on sauces and discover a limitless wonderful world. You need time
to create this sauce, and making pasta from scratch takes too long. So you find
a great, quick and functional alternative that will allow you to give you more
time to develop your sauce: instant pasta. After a while, you’ve become an expert,
but like Chimero says, this person forgot that like mountains are mountains, pasta
is pasta. Without this notion, you can have a delicious, shiny, provocative sauce
covering the pasta, but at the end, what makes the pasta pasta, is pasta! Fresh,
hand-made pasta. Not something that “does the job” or “looks like pasta.” With
the “edgeless” web, you can do crazy, colorful, playful things, but it’s in the
consistencies that you find the key. You must think of each element inside what
Chimero calls the box. It’s important “not drawing the box until you know what goes
in it,” or not plating the pasta before having prepared each one of it elements.
Like he says, “We're creating assemblages of elements, then associating them with
the appropriate space.”
Having read this article gave me a new perspective towards the web, and more
specifically coding. To be honest, I’m too new to this area to have experienced
my mountains turn into something else, but I have to admit having used CSS as a
way to somehow hide my unexperty.It’s a good reminder to respect the pace of learning,
and not get too excited by novelty to the point that it will make me jump to things
that seem more advanced and sophisticated. One must respect the material, and
master it to use it to it’s best.