Here are some ideas I found especially interesting in Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of Modern Design in the first chapter, which gives insights into the birth of modern design in around 1900. This period of 1880–1930 was a fascinating and turbulent time for the arts (the influence of Modernism).

The first visual symptom is the departure of ornament, and the recognition that machinery can be beautiful without ornament:

All machinery may be beautiful, when it is undecorated even. Do not seek to decorate it. We cannot but think all good machinery is graceful, also, the line of the strength and the line of the beauty being one.

It’s surprising that the above quotation is attributed to Oscar Wilde, also known for writing particularly florid poetry. His argument is that ornamentation isn’t necessary for beauty, as “the line of the strength” (its functionality as a machine) and “the line of the beauty” (its aesthetic) are one.

Machinery can be beautiful without ornament: it is beautiful because it works well. In the same chapter, Pevsner quotes Van de Velde, who asks if the engineer should be on equal footing as the architect:

Why should artists who build palaces in stone rank any higher than artists who build in metal?

Engineers are architects, then, who use a different medium/materials. (On the flip-side: why can’t the product of an architect, a building, be a piece of machinery? A house a machine for living in…)

Van de Velde raises engineers to the level of architects: engineers are “the architects of the present day”. He requests “a logical structure of products, uncompromising logic in the use of materials, proud and frank exhibition of working processes”. This is sounding like highly relevant (and inspirational) advice for web designers and developers. Designers especially: we do like our working processes, our user testing, and a synthesis of other disciplines such as psychology in our craft, after all.

Adolf Loos, like Van de Velde, calls our engineers “our Hellenes” (meaning the Greeks: the culture which inspired the Roman Empire). So from the engineers, “we receive our culture”. Culture – previously the exclusive realm of poets and painters – received from engineers and technologists. Nikolaus Pevsner points out that Loos consistent enough to call the plumber “the quartermaster of culture, i.e., the kind of culture which is decisive today”.

Of course, there are different circles of culture. If we believe Doris Lessing, computer scientists, web developers, and web designers would be those complicit in propagating the “inanities” of the internet. One of the best things about the internet is that it’s an open platform for people to make of it what they will, high and low. Typophile and LOLcats (and people who like both).

Finally, a timeless design principle from Otto Wagner in 1894:

All modern forms must be in harmony with [...] the new requirements of our time.

Icelandic illustrator/artist/graphic designer Siggi Eggertsson has the most interesting work I’ve seen recently. A “post-modern impressionist”, his work has a maturity beyond his age (24). In 2006, Print Magazine named him as one of the brightest design stars under 30. He already has a formidable client list including Nike, H&M, and Coca Cola, to name a few.

Most interesting to me, his work is underwritten by formal rules and systems, which is more common in graphic design than illustration. I have just asked him if he feels graphic design has influenced his work as an illustrator, but he said that he doesn’t like to categorise his work as “art”, “illustration”, or “graphic design”.

So, I’m going to leave it there, and share a few cool pieces of his work that I particularly like:

Right now, websites are the domain of the graphic designer. I’m not sure why the web hasn’t been leapt upon by modern fine artists as an exciting new canvas and set of media. Video can be fine art. Sculpture can be fine art. A banana dangling from a string attached to the ceiling can, apparently, be fine art.

Why not a website?

A webpage is a blank canvas. It’s been utilised well by writers and graphic designers, so why can’t artists use a webpage as a canvas? The obvious negative side to this approach is the fact webpages are unreliable, and typically look different depending on the technology of the viewer. A canvas is static, a webpage is scalable. (Surely, an artist could keep that in mind and accommodate this idea into the thesis behind the work?) I think it’s definitely something that could be experimented with.  You can make a mark on a webpage in lots of ways: HTML, CSS, images, text, space …

One of the things I’ve really wanted to do is to experiment with telling a story through a sequence of pictures. The pictures could be scrolled to or clicked through. I’d like to try doing something really unusual (and, of course, not functional, which is part of the beauty of it) with a webpage. Something that makes you stop and stare and paste the link to your friends. Something that breaks with all the convention of what we’ve seen visually on the web.