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italian digital: simone biffi, mirco pasqualini, nicola stumpo. the italians were latecomers to the brave new world of digital design ..................................
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| - october 2001 - the italians were latecomers to the brave new world of digital design, but three young artists have been running to catch up ... --- techniques used for artwork reproduction have always had a profound influence on artistic development. apprentice artists no longer need to travel the world in search of artistic masterpieces to inspire them and teach them techniques, images have themselves been travelling since the end of the 15th century. but as the original image -imago- becomes information, it inevitably undergoes a standardisation process as well. with the innovation of the internet, new semantic codes are being propagated in a very short space of time, are used by a vast community and quickly become codified as official languages. the on-line community has a huge influence on all web art production - work published on the internet stimulates countless designers and serves to increase their awareness. thanks to web tutorials, a huge range of people can learn artistic techniques and find ways to adapt them. this acceleration in the spread of information obviously increases globalization and renders production more homogeneous. history has taught us that as the distribution of information increases, so the number of true innovators is reduced, fewer creators of ideas there are… as for web design, it is said that in italy they are real copy-cats and that they got there after everybody else. the development of internet design has been slow, but as they have been grown in experience, italians have begun to add something of their own to the field. --- short web design development overview in 1993 the national center for supercomputing applications (NSCA) developed the browser ‘mosaic’, now 'netscape', allowing images, texts, sounds and movies to be combined for the first time. but the real boom in webdesign began in 1995 when sun microsystems developed java technology, which allowed temporary interaction between the user and the server by means of short scripts. in 1996 microsoft added its own browser 'internet explorer’ - to the scene and, thanks to the continual development of HTML, new versions of these browsers and the countless plug-ins (such as 'quick time', 'shockwave' real audio/video, 'VRML' ), have considerably increased the communicative potential of the web. in the mid-1990s web design became a hot topic in italy. 'mosaic' http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu --- italian protagonists several young artists tried to keep up with the times, initially following the predominating artistic currents, before finding their own niches in the world of web design. the best-known italian web designers in the international community - mirco pasqualini, simone biffi and nicola (niko) stumpo have all arrived at the same point, but from different directions. after professional experiences in very diverse fields, they each discovered an overwhelming passion for design on the internet. Like their predecessors and mentors - joshua davis, matt owens, josh ulm - they are all self-taught. grown up with a ‘do it yourself’ -mentality, they are their own most valuable resource. what follows is a preview of their work, from pasqualini's work with ootword, biffi's antiweb and stumpo's experimentation.
--- experimental / business-oriented in italy, everything is sooo old and things are changing sooo slowly - which in some ways isn’t all bad - so the general internet business trends are a strong influence on the creative aspect of web designers' work. at the moment italian companies won’t take any risk at all: italian web design suffers from the barriers of clients’ limited web-budgets and conflicting creative control. client briefs tend to be strictly focused on targeting users; they seem to fear real interactivity - and often projects are given short deadlines. the mainstream internet design contingent in italy is convinced that all that is need to impress the audience is a product-presentation clip. web designers are asked to develop a site with flash intros just for the sake of having something animated. new entries want big buttons with drop-shadows, for example. up until now it seems that there has been no structure for a really autonomous communication system on fairly large-scale projects. the majority of website visitors expect information to be delivered immediately, but viwers to web-art-sites are prepared to accept longer loading times in their quest for emotions. the visual imagery surrounding us is so vivid, it can become overwhelming; so it is sometimes through other senses, sound and music in particular, that we have experiences. music has a profound influence on the web's visual style, but there is a tendency to add sound to everything, particularly in an effort to punctuate mouseover states. connections between sounds and visuals should be planned and implemented carefully in order to create free-flowing animation with a high emotional impact on the visitor. ‘flash’ is those three webdesigners’ tool of choice, because with ‘flash’ they can translate sounds into images… and make visitorsl forget that they’re sitting in front of a computer. the designers support their experimental work by collaborating as head creative directors with some of italy’s leading multimedia agencies, creating commercial design during the day and in their spare time turning to exploration and experimental work (mostly at night). a sort of dr. jeckyll and mr. hyde? 'no,' they reply in unison, 'excellence means knowing how to merge both things. to succeed in meeting the client’s needs and creating something that satisfies you personally, is what we try to do,' they say. 'transgression is possible in business-orient projects a s well. in Italy, clients have had some bad experiences, where large companies, betting on the new economy, only thought about the turnover, not about quality. now clients are more mature, they know how to choose and they are careful when picking out an agency. but they are still a bit diffident, in the initial phase of new projects, when we propose something different… we love them all :-) ' ------------------------------------------------------------------- this designboom article was published in november 2001 blueprint magazine, london special report : italian design --- ---  ------- monthly designboom newsletter ------- ------- ? comments and contact us ? -------  |
 design by mirco pasqualini  design by mirco pasqualini ---  design by simone biffi  design by simone biffi ---  design by niko stumpo  design by niko stumpo --- |
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