Localoaf

I suppose I am late to this, but Olia Lialina has a wonderful set of pages documenting the aesthetic of the early web, the populist, do-it-yourself folk art that brought us tiling animated starry night GIFs and Under Construction banners. Whether or not this is history anyone will care to read in 100 years, it sure is fun to read (and remember) now. She doesn’t seem to cite much of her information (such as dates when certain fads came and went) and says some seemingly spurious things like “Links — the once typical means of conveyance — have lost their infrastructural importance,” but her thoughts on the re-established disparity between professional designers and everyone else are very interesting. Her follow-up looks at the new marks of amateur design (like use/abuse of transparency *cough* and glittery GIFs), and while incomplete, is equally fun.

On a related note, has anyone else suffered a seizure from MIA’s site?

Via Boing Boing, background reappropriated (in one of the Web’s lasting traditions) from Oliana’s piece.