How do these sites differ from larger platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook?
How do these websites speak to ideas of inclusivity and access? Do they have defined audiences in mind?
Do you see a desire for smaller“hand made” sites outside of niche art communities? Why or why not?
Could these websites be described as counter culture? Why or why not?
What makes something“punk rock” and how is that communicated visually?
👩💻 Demo: Media Queries
Media Queries
Unlike print, digital design is experienced on a variety of formats(for example, phones, tablets, a variable browser window), so as designer’s we need to create a system that works on many different formats. As developers, we need to keep this in mind for the same reasons.
If you’d like to follow along, create an index.html and main.css file, or copy and paste the following and also create a blank css file.
Just before I left NewYork, I found myself in an unexpected position: clinging to the bars of the JeffersonMarketGarden, looking in. A moment before I’d been on the run as usual, intending to exploit two minutes of time I’d carved out of the forty-five-minute increments into which, back then, I divided my days. Each block of time packed tight and levelled off precisely, like a child prepping a sandcastle. Two ‘free’ minutes meant a macchiato. (In an ideal, cashless world, if nobody spoke to me.) In those days, the sharp endof my spade was primed against chatty baristas, overly friendly mothers, needy students, curious readers – anyone I considered a threat to the programme. Oh, I was very well defended. But this was a sneak attack . . . by horticulture. Tulips. Springing up in a little city garden, from a triangle of soil where three roads met. Not a very sophisticated flower – a child could draw it – and these were garish: pink with orange highlights. EvenasI was peering in at them I wished they were peonies.
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<p>
City born, city bred, I wasn’t aware of having an especially keen interest in flowers – at least no interest strong enough to forgo coffee. But my fingers were curled around those iron bars. I wasn’t letting go. Nor was I alone. Either side ofJefferson stood two other women, both around my age, staring through the bars. The day was cold, bright, blue. Not a cloud between the WorldTradeand the old seven-digit painted phone number forBigelow’s. We all had somewhere to be. But some powerful instinct had drawn us here, and the predatory way we were ogling those tulips put me in mind ofNabokov, describing the supposed genesis ofLolita: ‘As far asI can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage.’ I’ve always been interested in that quote – without believing a word of it. (Something inspired Lolita. I’m certain no primates were involved.) The scientist offers the piece of charcoal expecting or hoping for a transcendent revelation about this ape, but the revelation turns out to be one of contingency, of a certain set of circumstances – of things as they happen to be. The ape is caged in by its nature, by its instincts, and by its circumstance. (Whichof these takes the primary role is for zoologists to debate.) So it goes. I didn’t need a Freudianto tell me that three middle-aged women, teetering at the brink of peri-menopause, had been drawn to a gaudy symbol of fertility and renewal in the middle of a barren concrete metropolis . . . and, indeed, when we three spotted each other there were shamefaced smiles all round. Butin my case the shame was not what it would have once been, back in the day – back whenI first read Lolita, as a young woman. At that time, the cage of my circumstance, in my mind, was my gender. Not its actuality – I liked my body well enough. WhatI didn’t like was what I thought it signified: that I was tied to my ‘nature’, to my animal body – to the whole simian realm of instinct – and far more elementally so than, say, my brothers. I had ‘cycles’. They did not. I was to pay attention to ‘clocks’. They needn’t. There were special words for me, lurking on the horizon, prepackaged to mark the possible future stages of my existence. I might become a spinster. I might become a crone. I might be a babe or a MILFor ‘childless’. My brothers, no matter what else might befall them, would remain men. Andin the endof it all, ifI was lucky, I would become that most piteous of things, an old lady, whom I already understood was a figure everybody felt free to patronize, even children.
</p>
<p>
‘(YouMakeMeFeelLike) ANaturalWoman’ – I used to listen to that song andtryto imagine its counterpart. You could make someone feel like a ‘real’ man – no doubt its own kind of cage – but never a natural one. A man was a man was a man. He bent nature to his will. He did not submit to it, except in death. Submissionto nature was to be my realm, but I wanted no part of that, and so would refuse to keep any track whatsoever of my menstrual cycle, preferring to cry on Mondayand find out the (supposed) reason for my tears on Tuesday. Yes, much better this than to properly prepare for a blue Mondayor believe it in any way inevitable. My moods were my own. They had no reflection in nature. I refused to countenance the idea that anything about me might have a cyclic, monthly motion. AndifI had children one day, I would have them ‘on my own timeline’, irrespective of how the bells were tolling on all those dreaded clocks in the women’s magazines. Of ‘broodiness’ I would hear nothing: I was not a hen. Andif, whenI was in my twenties, any bold Freudian had dared to suggest that my apartment – filled as it was with furry cushions and furry rugs and furry bolsters, furry throws and furry footstools – in any sense implied a sublimated desire for animal company, or that I was subconsciously feathering my nest in expectation ofnew life, well, I would have shown that impertinent Freudian the door. I was a woman, but not that kind of woman. ‘Internalized misogyny’, I suppose they’d call all of the above now. I have no better term. But at the hot core of it there was an obsession with control, common amongst my people (writers).
Discussion Questions
👩💻 Demo: Media Queries
Media Queries
<!DOCTYPE html><html><head> <title>Layouts and Responsive Design</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="assets/main.css"></head><body> <div class="container"> <div class="title"> <h1>Peonies</h1> <h2>Zadie Smith</h2> </div> <div class="content"> <p> Just before I left New York, I found myself in an unexpected position: clinging to the bars of the Jefferson Market Garden, looking in. A moment before I’d been on the run as usual, intending to exploit two minutes of time I’d carved out of the forty-five-minute increments into which, back then, I divided my days. Each block of time packed tight and levelled off precisely, like a child prepping a sandcastle. Two ‘free’ minutes meant a macchiato. (In an ideal, cashless world, if nobody spoke to me.) In those days, the sharp end of my spade was primed against chatty baristas, overly friendly mothers, needy students, curious readers – anyone I considered a threat to the programme. Oh, I was very well defended. But this was a sneak attack . . . by horticulture. Tulips. Springing up in a little city garden, from a triangle of soil where three roads met. Not a very sophisticated flower – a child could draw it – and these were garish: pink with orange highlights. Even as I was peering in at them I wished they were peonies. </p> <p> City born, city bred, I wasn’t aware of having an especially keen interest in flowers – at least no interest strong enough to forgo coffee. But my fingers were curled around those iron bars. I wasn’t letting go. Nor was I alone. Either side of Jefferson stood two other women, both around my age, staring through the bars. The day was cold, bright, blue. Not a cloud between the World Trade and the old seven-digit painted phone number for Bigelow’s. We all had somewhere to be. But some powerful instinct had drawn us here, and the predatory way we were ogling those tulips put me in mind of Nabokov, describing the supposed genesis of Lolita: ‘As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage.’ I’ve always been interested in that quote – without believing a word of it. (Something inspired Lolita. I’m certain no primates were involved.) The scientist offers the piece of charcoal expecting or hoping for a transcendent revelation about this ape, but the revelation turns out to be one of contingency, of a certain set of circumstances – of things as they happen to be. The ape is caged in by its nature, by its instincts, and by its circumstance. (Which of these takes the primary role is for zoologists to debate.) So it goes. I didn’t need a Freudian to tell me that three middle-aged women, teetering at the brink of peri-menopause, had been drawn to a gaudy symbol of fertility and renewal in the middle of a barren concrete metropolis . . . and, indeed, when we three spotted each other there were shamefaced smiles all round. But in my case the shame was not what it would have once been, back in the day – back when I first read Lolita, as a young woman. At that time, the cage of my circumstance, in my mind, was my gender. Not its actuality – I liked my body well enough. What I didn’t like was what I thought it signified: that I was tied to my ‘nature’, to my animal body – to the whole simian realm of instinct – and far more elementally so than, say, my brothers. I had ‘cycles’. They did not. I was to pay attention to ‘clocks’. They needn’t. There were special words for me, lurking on the horizon, prepackaged to mark the possible future stages of my existence. I might become a spinster. I might become a crone. I might be a babe or a MILF or ‘childless’. My brothers, no matter what else might befall them, would remain men. And in the end of it all, if I was lucky, I would become that most piteous of things, an old lady, whom I already understood was a figure everybody felt free to patronize, even children. </p> <p> ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ – I used to listen to that song and try to imagine its counterpart. You could make someone feel like a ‘real’ man – no doubt its own kind of cage – but never a natural one. A man was a man was a man. He bent nature to his will. He did not submit to it, except in death. Submission to nature was to be my realm, but I wanted no part of that, and so would refuse to keep any track whatsoever of my menstrual cycle, preferring to cry on Monday and find out the (supposed) reason for my tears on Tuesday. Yes, much better this than to properly prepare for a blue Monday or believe it in any way inevitable. My moods were my own. They had no reflection in nature. I refused to countenance the idea that anything about me might have a cyclic, monthly motion. And if I had children one day, I would have them ‘on my own timeline’, irrespective of how the bells were tolling on all those dreaded clocks in the women’s magazines. Of ‘broodiness’ I would hear nothing: I was not a hen. And if, when I was in my twenties, any bold Freudian had dared to suggest that my apartment – filled as it was with furry cushions and furry rugs and furry bolsters, furry throws and furry footstools – in any sense implied a sublimated desire for animal company, or that I was subconsciously feathering my nest in expectation of new life, well, I would have shown that impertinent Freudian the door. I was a woman, but not that kind of woman. ‘Internalized misogyny’, I suppose they’d call all of the above now. I have no better term. But at the hot core of it there was an obsession with control, common amongst my people (writers).