Question: Did the internet kill the artist? 

 Sure, there are benefits to having a presence on the web; being able to conveniently make something visible to a large number of people at one time.  In my opinion, the internet ruins a lot of amazing human experiences. The act of going to an art museum in itself is an amazing human experience. To a lot people though, this experience seems pointless when they can just view the work online. I’m guilty of this; not wanting to pay to go to movie when I can just wait to torrent it online. This is especially true for books as well. Why would a person buy a book in paper form, when they simply download it onto their ebook, or better yet find it for free online? I think performing actions online instead of having to do it in person takes away a lot of substance and authenticity of the action. The reason work is in a museum is for people to go and view it. The internet is necessary in some ways, but in other ways it is detrimental. This is why I have a conflicted relationship with it. 

Question: Are default system designs necessary in the field of graphic design?

In my opinion, yes. Templates are necessary for the creative process.  I don’t necessarily think someone should solely use default system designs to create work, but I do think that they are a good and necessary stepping stone in order to keep the field of graphic design existent. Take Tumblr for instance; one of the main objectives of  Tumblr is to give less tech savvy people the ability to essentially create their own site and easily navigate it. This is based off of the templates that have already been created that other people can use. Without these basic templates, people wouldn’t be able to use the site as easily as a lot of them wouldn’t know to code. The use of template is very common among social media sites, such as the once popular myspace, and bloodspot. This is why I think that default system designs are necessary in order to make graphic design accessible and usable.

Is it possible to make something that is universally aesthetically pleasing and at the same useful?

In my opinion, yes. Just this weekend, I watched the ‘Steve Jobs’ movie, and I guess that kind of inspired me to think that it is possible. The original models that were made by Apple, were literally bricks. And when Jobs left and made a new model, it looked like a box.  However, I think that the apple computers are a good example of an object changing and improving over time, both for actual use and aesthetics. There are so many examples that I could use, and this is especially apparent on the web, which is one of the most useful aspects of our society, where literally anything is possible.

Question: Is it possible to completely write off symmetry in all aspects of design?

In the article A Fine Balance, the writer Erik Spiekermann seems to have a oppositional view towards the idea of symmetry in design, instead favoring asymmetry. His reasoning for this is that symmetry is too easy and boring. He claims that asymmetry is more accessible and dynamic. He states that within the setup of a page, having elements find their natural position makes it more approachable and easy to read. I agree–partially.

I think that when Spiekermann talks about symmetry, he’s talking about the very generic idea, where two sides of something look exactly the same. However, I think that symmetry is necessary and always somewhat evident in a work, maybe not in a completely obvious and unnaturally even sense, but in other ways. Even if two parts of something don’t look  exactly the same, there still needs to be an aspect of balance, so that the viewer does not becomes overwhelmed. In my opinion, asymmetry is not possible without a level of symmetry involved.

Question: Is it better for information to be free or expensive?

I feel like this is a question that I have been conflicted about for a while now, and it’s a theme that I touched upon in one of the other readings that was assigned for this class. There was one passage within From Zero to One that really embodies this theme — “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient.”

Before I started college, I had never experienced having to pay for a text book. I’m against the concept of paying for textbooks because I know for a fact that i’m only going to read them once, but at the same time I feel as though They’re one of the few texts that will actually make me learn something, and therefore the most important. It bothers me though that they are more expensive than other types of texts, but at the same time it makes sense, with the idea of classism and that a person must have a certain background and social awareness to be able to afford and comprehend a textbook. However, I don’t like this idea, because I feel that informative texts should be accessible to everyone, so that everyone learns, and therefore everyone has the academic background to be able to comprehend that information.

Is non linear writing more innovative or confusing?

Before reading ‘Why no one clicked on the great hypertext story’, I had never even heard of nonlinear writing. The idea sounded alluring enough in theory: no concrete beginning or end, a seemingly unlimited amount of stories within one story. And I wondered, why is it that i’ve never heard or seen this? Well, in reality it is incredibly confusing.

When I first opened the article and saw numbered paragraphs, I didn’t know what it meant, so i attempted to read from the top to the bottom like a normal person would; I couldn’t get passed the second paragraph. There was no alternate story, just a bunch of sentences that had absolutely no relation to the previous ones. Eventually I understood what the numbers and the arrows were for, and that they were supposed to relate to the material in the text, and I was able to decipher the true story out of the discombobulation. Nonlinear reading sounds like a really cool idea theoretically, but from my experience, it seemed like there was too much going on. For me personally, structure and order in a story is vital to it being a cohesive piece which I would be able to comprehend and enjoy.

Question- Is it more detrimental or beneficial to an author if their work is easily accessible without having to be bought?

Response- In the Reading, Kenneth Goldsmith often touched on the fact that in many areas, literature is not as easily accessible. This was one of the reasons for him creating ‘UbuWeb’, a site that distributes hard to find or out of print reading materials for free. This idea reminded of me the concept behind ‘Wattpad’, which is a website where users can access literary work written by other users, for free. This also includes more well known authors of today and lesser known writers in a myriad of genres.

Although I believe that the web is a great platform for getting one’s work noticed, I can’t help but contemplate how beneficial it actually is to distribute your own work for free. Having free excerpts is understandable, but an entire novel? Wouldn’t it lesson the value to leak your own work to an unfathomable population of people without them giving you any sort of reward for the work you put into it? There are definite benefits, and definite downsides, which is why i’m conflicted. My personal opinion is that it would be counterproductive to do so.