Give me some space! Outer space, wide open space, personal space, defensible space, urban space, live-work space, 3d space, white space, pictorial space, flat space, letter space, parking space, web space, sacred space, workspace, conceptual space, space dust, air space, space cadet, space time continuum, make space, warp space, colour space, space age, space invaders, space writer, space filler.
I could forgiven for thinking that we had something going with this space stuff, yet despite the talk no-one seems to be acting as if they love space very much. In fact I would say the opposite is true; the overriding zeitgeist seems to be a general fear of wide open spaces, a kind of communal agoraphobia.
All we want to do is plug into our homes and soak up our low fat lager and New World wine with our free home delivery user-friendly curried interactive microwave vitamin enriched organic TV pizza. We want to take refuge from the jobs, which involve meeting people and learning, that we do to earn the pizza money and the membership fees for the gym where we work off the pizza. Stay indoors!
Space the final frontier. Space travel for all is becoming too close to a reality; people prefer the romance of made up space travel; it’s no mistake that the Star Wars chronology is stuck in reverse gear. Collectors would much prefer to spend the ill-gotten gains of the Information Industry on misinformation, the made-up rubbish that gave misguided optimism to their youth. Nobody is interested in the present, especially when it’s January and it’s raining.
Minimal spaces, urban places where beauty is measured by the square foot, look good in pictures but it’s very hard on the staff (you don’t clean your own loft do you?) Great to see letter-spacing back after its heyday in 1980’s when, like shoulder pads and hair lacquer; you just put in loads and you couldn’t go wrong. But it did go wrong, didn’t it? perhaps there is a correlation between the gaps in between the letters and the state of the economy. The spaces get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then pop, the bubble bursts. White space doesn’t seem such hot proposition for revival, maybe because it used to imply acres of very expensive paper stock with nothing on it.
Is it really necessary to put every thing you know now or have ever known on the front page of your web site? It didn’t make money or sense then and it won’t make money or sense now. There’s plenty of time; just because 2001 Space Odyssey is no longer science fiction but merely quaint fiction doesn’t mean you will miss the bus to the future if you don’t book now. You know full well that there soon won’t be any more buses anyway.
So start walking now [walking, not running] take your time, follow any interesting detours you might meet along the way. Be the tortoise, and wave to the hares as they roar past in their Ferrari’s they may need your help later. If you don’t have anything to say why not express yourself with the majesty of silence, don’t say anything. If you don’t have any pictures, then why go to the trouble of finding some when it only eats up bandwidth. The D&AD award for the most stylish presentation of a telephone number on a commercial site goes to…Space on the internet is free, enjoy it.