The Creativity of Web Design, Indie Video Games and Fans

There has been much talk about support for public television this past week​ and so it is time to visit PBS Off Book once again to remind ourselves of the great work PBS Digital is doing. From indie video games, featuring many great games I've played and highly endorse, to the creation of websites and the powerful role of fans in shaping not only the niche cultures they passionately love but also society as a whole, these three mini documentaries showcase the best the studio is producing. 

The Creativity of Indie Video Games

​The video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent developing these interactive experiences. But there are also small-scale developers working in the indie game realm, creating unique and experimental video games without the budgets of the larger "AAA" games. These indie game developers devote time, money, and take great risks in a quest to realize their creative vision. They deftly balance game mechanics & systems, sound & visuals, and an immersive storytelling experience to push the gaming medium into revolutionary new territory. Much like indie music or indie film, the indie gaming movement provides a creative outlet for game designers who want to work outside of the mainstream.

Featuring:

Jamin Warren, Kill Screen Magazine
​​Zach Gage, creator of Spelltower
​Darren Korb, audio designer of Bastion
​Eddy Boxerman & Andy Nealen, creators of Osmos
​Leigh Alexander, gaming journalist

Complete list of games featured.​

The Art of Web Design

The explosion of the internet over the past 20 years has led to the development of one of the newest creative mediums: the website. Web designers have adapted through the technological developments of html, CSS, Flash, and JavaScript, and have mastered the balance between creativity and usability. Now with the advance of mobile, the greatest websites have taken user experience and responsive design to the next level, and continue our evolution from print to a digital world.

Featuring:

Jeffrey Zeldman
​Jason Santa Maria
​Whitney Hess 

Can Fandom Change Society?

Before the mass media, people actively engaged with culture through storytelling and expanding well-known tales. Modern fan culture connects to this historical tradition, and has become a force that challenges social norms and accepted behavior. Whether the issue is gender, sexuality, subversiveness, or even intellectual property law, fans participate in communities that allow them to think outside of what is possible in more mainstream scenarios. "Fannish" behavior has become its own grassroots way of altering our society and culture, and a means of actively experiencing one's own culture. In a sense, fans have changed from the faceless adoring masses, to people who are proud of their identity and are stretching the boundaries of what is considered "normal". 

Featuring:

Prof. Francesca Coppa, Muhlenberg College 
​Chris Menning, editor at Modern Primate
​Amanda Brennan, researcher at Know Your Meme 
​Dr. Whitney Phillips, lecturer at NYU
​Alexa Dacre, fan fiction writer
​Naomi Novik, Organization for Transformative Works

Previously:

The Art of Animation, Motion Graphics, Tech Gone Wrong & Why They Go Viral
​The Art Of Logo Design: PBS Off Book
​Seeing Beyond The Human Eye
​​Pop Culture Through The Lens Of Nostalgia: The Evolution Of 8-Bit Art
​The Culture Of Reddit
​The Vast World Of Lego Art
​Three Points Of View On Fandom, Fan Fiction & Fan Art
​The Art of Film & TV Title Design: PBS Off Book
​Tattoos: Pop Portraits, Japanese Traditional, American Eclectic
​Art In The Era Of The Internet: The Impact Of Kickstarter, Creative Commons & Creators Project
​Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium
​Off Book Series One: The Complete Series

Frank Chimero: Do Things The Long, Hard Stupid Way

Ending the week with a bit of optimistic storytelling by designer and illustrator Frank Chimero, at the Do Lectures, talking about the side benefits of doing things the long, hard, stupid way. The book he mentions during the talk, The Shape of Design, is now finished and you should read it. The beautifully produced printed book is sold out but you can get it as an ebook or read it online. In the talk he also discusses the idea of gifts and our creative work as gift giving, especially in a digital age. Themes from a must-read book by Lewis Hyde called appropriatelly The Gift. So this weekend spend some time thinking about what things you can create and meaningfully give away. 

Who Invented The Internet? We Did.→

In other words, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of peer production to the modern digital world. Peer networks created and maintain the Linux operating system on which Android smartphones are based; the UNIX kernel that Mac OS X and iOS devices use; and the Apache software that powers most Web servers in the world (not to mention the millions of entries that now populate Wikipedia). What sounds on the face of it like the most utopian of collectivist fantasies — millions of people sharing their ideas with no ownership claims — turns out to have made possible the communications infrastructure of our age.

It’s not enough to say that peer networks are an interesting alternative to states and markets. The state and the market are now fundamentally dependent on peer networks in ways that would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago.

​Steven Johnson, in The New York Times, expands on ideas from his most recent book Future Perfect. While both governments and corporations want us to believe that they are responsible for the creation of the internet, it is really the users, us, that shape what happens and how the internet grows. Johnson shares how Harvard legal scholar Yochai Benkler calls this phenomenon "commons-based peer production."

And so, while much discussion occurs amongst large corporations, the government and even the press - about maps on mobile, ecommerce, privacy, bandwidth, regulations and restrictions - it is our behavior and how we spend (or don't) our money within the internet that pushes its evolution forward.

It is a bit like voting in an election, every time we consume anything related to the internet we build it a little bit more. In the same way that we have a responsability to be an informed electorate, we should be informed consumers and not let self-aggrandazing origin myths shape what we want and need from the internet. 

Design Wants to Be Free

Design wants to be free, to paraphrase Stewart Brand. And when I say “free,” I’m talking about the broadest sense of the word—meaning both low-cost and liberated. We’re not there yet, but that moment isn’t far off. What will liberate design? Our tools, for one; they are increasingly cheap, powerful, and available to all. Design no longer signifies high priests at their drafting tables but rather you and me at our computers: 3-D printers are the new inkjets, and the age of desktop publishing is fast becoming the age of desktop manufacturing. Haven’t yet printed your own toys, household staples, and replacement parts? You will soon. And even if you’re not remotely interested in making stuff yourself, you’re probably still quick to appreciate that there’s something really cool about skyscrapers that go up in two weeks or the glass that protects your iPhone.

...

Design isn’t just something we appreciate, it’s something we do. Autodesk is helping by creating tools and services that it hopes will power the maker movement. And Etsy is changing the definition of “handmade” by helping its sellers manufacture their wares on a larger scale.

Yves Behar introduces the Wired Design Issue, featuring a look at the new MakerBot Replicator and an engrossing article on something we all carry in our pockets, gorilla glass. 

Building Our New Shrines

This is what we’ve always done: we build our shrines. We build our shrines sometimes before we even have content. We build our shrines before we know what that content will look like.

We love our shrines. We love crafting them, sanding them, staining, and lacquering them. We craft and then fill them with our precious stuff—words and images. And then we think, Ah! I need to add those pieces of lint, those little doodads in the corner: the share button and email button, the like and +1 and retweet buttons. We stick them in the corners of our shrines because we built our shrines without them, sometimes before they existed.

...

What is a publisher anymore, anyway? A blog is a magazine. A magazine a blog. A newspaper a WordPress install. A Twitter account a journalist.

Another great essay by Craig Mod exploring the ways and the tools we build to create "our shrines." He has consistently and thoughtfully been looking at the evolution of creating published content. ​