From Cameron Moll's Article

I thought the articles from Cameron Moll were interesting to read.  If you haven't had a chance to read them yet, they're about a community of web designers who create their sites to have an older, vintage look, more specifically of the '50s style.  This caught my attention because I've been learning about antiques and why it has such a huge market on eBay.

My thought is that all people embrace nostalgia in one way or another.  Most songs we hear on the radio are about past experiences, photographs are moments we need to have documented proof, books, movies, etc.

Cameron Moll refers to his and his colleagues' sites as striving for that "worn, aged, distressed, grunge look," but I don't think that's entirely true.  People aren't attracted to anything worn or aged, possibly because it subconsciously reminds us of our imminent death.  On eBay, sellers refer to an aged item as either VINTAGE or ANTIQUE or CLASSIC.  These are items that aren't dead or dying, they're still alive.  I think they're similar to photographs that identify a time in their past that they may hold fondly. 

From Moll's links, I checked out Greg Storey's site where he was using the Golden Age Era (post-WWII).  I'm no history pro, but it seems that WWII changed the people during that time.  Before the war, there was a need to follow Logic and Reason.  Then you look after WWII and find people questioning this so called Logic or Reason after the entire world was trying to destroy themselves. 

Here Storey talks about the change of colors used:

"The 1940's started off very colorful with cherry reds, pinks, and yellows coming into full swing. But as World War 2 became a reality the look of the world started to de-saturate"

On eBay, people will pay good money for items from the 1950s.  These items aren't worn or de-saturated because they reach people on a much higher level than their appearance.  In relating this all to web design, I think this is how people are reached.  People don't go to websites just for the bright colors or fancy layouts.  They might be impressed the first go-around, but later find there isn't much of a connection (similar to relationships).

At first I thought web and graphic design were all about appearance and vanity, but I'm beginning to realize that it's deeper than that.  I like what the vintage-site guys are doing.  They seem to know what really appeals to them and putting it out literally to the world without shame.  And it seems to be working for them.

Comments

[Elara]

In a way, websites ARE just about visual appearance, but visual appearance is important. Visual communication is a huge part of our communication, like it or not, but how something looks plays a huge part of how something is received.

I think another part of why web design ends up being so visual is because it CAN! Like they discuss early on in the Non-Designers Web book, colors that cost a fortune in print are free on the web! We've gone from an era of scarcity and huge prices to a bountiful one and as a result, first people go crazy and the results are rather glaring, but then people have the freedom to refine and experiment, which we, fortunately, are benefiting from.