Thought You Should See This: What The SOPA/PIPA Blackout Says About Internet Companies' Attitude Toward Design (Hint: Not Much)

sillinesses:

thoughtyoushouldseethis:

Lots of excitement and analysis about yesterday’s U.S.-based blackout of many major websites, including Google, Wikipedia and Wordpress. I already posted a link to Clay Shirky’s analysis of PIPA and SOPA, and unsurprisingly, other opinions have emerged in the meantime, including John Gapper’s Financial Times

This entire piece was overly pretentious. It reeks of contempt; the designer looking down on the pitiful attempts of major online presences fighting for the freedom of the internet. 

“Protesting? Please, that’s beneath us designers. Instead, we’ll sit back and jeer at your choice of font and non-use of images.”

This is not the time to criticize ignorance in design. Internet freedom will burn while these “critics” sit atop their perches, watching the whole damn thing burn. Want to design something properly (because apparently, everybody else fails to) and do something, *gasp*, constructive? Why not design an infographic detailing the effects of SOPA and PIPA? Or, why not help spread information that people would actually find useful?

There’s a time and place for everything. This isn’t it.

Look it’s type ranged-left! It must be a nod to the modernists! Oh, centered and ranged-left type?! I mean, this is srs bsns guise, what were you thinking!? Black, grey and salmon? Wow, that hardly seems like a Palette of Dissent!

And I’m practically quoting the article verbatim. Look, whoever wrote or contributed to this drivel, are you even reading these things that came out of a smash of your head to the keyboard? Being a designer doesn’t give you the right to be a pretentious fuck. Okay, so maybe at times it does, but seriously, this? Get off your fucking high horse and get a hobby apart from editorializing, I’ve heard there’s this thing that’s pretty popular in some places, it’s called being nice, maybe you could pick that up.