^-^ I welcome you as you enter through the realm ^-^
I am a third-year design student currently in a loop-hole envolving media studies, internet culture and art theory. My latest academic projects reside at the intersection between graphic design, philosophy and visual culture. My preferred design mediums are editorial, web and illustration!!!
This webpage is inspired by 2000s webpages and old internet archives and it was very fun to make! ^-^ Beyond that, this choice of approach and this theme of revivalism of the early internet era is also a statement on digital experiences and on the act of publishing.
In a time where user-generated content is boxed into rigid scructures ran by corporate platforms, reclaiming the web as a space for personal experimentation feels quite freeing and resfreshing.
With the web 2.0 emerging in the early 2000s, there was this idea that the internet would be a common ground for connection and community - anyone could exist on the web and words like posting or blogging began taking over. Tools for publishing on web pages and blogs made displaying any personal content possible and this was infinitely customizable. Users could add music, videos, and any type of imagery in order to create their dream owned space and world - these were acts of curation.
So called social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Myspace, Twitter, Youtube, Last.fm and so on have appeared, and a large part of social life began to happen online. As of today, softwares that allows easy publishing of content–blogs and social networks are based on “templates” and fixed grids - which resulted in impersonal and flattened modes of communication. As the act of publishing became such a cakewalk through pre-fabricated web pages, naturally the users’ influence on the way their information is presented has completely vanished.
For example, terms and aesthetics from the 00-10s, like Frutiger Aero and Vaporwave surfaced as micro trends circa 2023 in social media platforms. The Frutiger Aero imagery depicts a clean, fast-paced and eco-friendly world - it became a visual language for hope and optimism. It embodies the dream of the internet as an utopia - where technology, nature, and design were in harmony – a path towards community, culture and welfare.
Today, Frutiger Aero is used ironically or critically as a symbol for the loss of a future that we were promised and that never really happened. This nostalgia is a symptom of a generation’s over-saturation and disillusionment with the current digital world. This optimism and innocence have been replaced by surveillance capitalism, data harvesting, and algorithmic anonymous identities. We found our online selves flattened into data points. :-(
This project’s approach is a response to that. I believe we can make small attempts at reclaiming the web back to a place of pink, bubbles, glitter and kitsch cat whatsapp gifs - and most importantly - that the web can be human and natural too. ⊹♡
You can say hi/collaborate/blackmail me on: