4 Similarities of Great Hip-Hop and Great Web Design
If you’ve ever met me (or even follow me on twitter) you would know two huge obsessions in my life are web design/development and hip hop music. Both of these passions stem from the creative spirit they both embody and also the modern, yet refined, twist both mediums have adapted from their earlier successor. Many people might not relate to the post because they don’t like hip hop or immediately connect it to “Rap” music (which is a major faux pas in my book), and if thats you check out some of the music references in the post, maybe you’ll see where I’m coming from.
Both are heavily inspired by a refined predecessor
Without knowing much about web design one would assume that its a pretty natural extension of graphic design, which it is, but only recently have web designers been able to use modern css, @font-face, and other layout techniques to truly make designs that are on par with top notch printed design. With these modern web design tools accessible to everyone, it is easy to make work that looks contrived or sloppy. Nowadays, great examples of web design lie closer to great examples of graphic design - with fundamental design principals such as grid theory, visual hierarchy, and typography holding much more weight. For me, great web design comes down to taking content that looks as if it were designed for print and translating and enhancing it to be a compelling web design
On the same thought, great hiphop often begins when the sound is built around strong jazz and soul influences. In the same way that web designers apply time-tested graphic design techniques to their modern craft, a music producer will sample an old jazz record and turn a vintage sound into a modern production. Acts like A Tribe Called Qwest, Blu, and Little Brother blend jazz/soul into their music so seamlessly you can hardly tell where one genre stops and the other begins.
A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation
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Blu - Amnesia
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Little Brother - The Way You Do It
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Both tell stories
This commonality is probably most obvious with hip hop. A few songs that immediately come to mind are Common’s I Used to Love H.E.R. and Dorian by Brother Ali. Common’s I Used to Love H.E.R., which is considered by some to be one of the greatest hiphop records of all time , uses an extended metaphor where Common describes the rise and fall of a school-yard girlfriend who moves out west for fame and fortune only to become degraded and misused. In the end of the song Common reveals the woman to be the personification of conscious hiphop music (which was on the decline because of the uprise of gangster rap in the mid-late 90s).
Common - I Used to Love H.E.R.
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Brother Ali - Dorian
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Web design is essentially all about communicating to the end user. The means of doing so varies amongst different projects and with different designers, but the goal of any designer is to communicate in the simplest and most effective way possible. While informative storytelling might be more common than narrative storytelling in web design, there are certainly great examples of narrative design. Looking at Gregory Woods portfolio you can see how he uses rich typography, bold imagery and expressive color patters to really capture the tone and mood of what he is trying to convey to the user.
Another great example of storytelling in web design is the Lost World’s Fairs project by the super friends-esce group of designers Naz Hamid, Frank Chimero, Jason Santa Maria, Trent Walton and Dave Rupert. In this example (which is a showcase of the Web Open Font Format) each designer tell a story of a “Lost World’s Fair” and through the use of great design mixed with modern web technologies is able to create an experience that brings the user into Fair itself.
Subtleties take it from good to great
In web design as with hip hop (or any form of creation for that matter) there is always a plethora if good and only a handful of great. One way people seem to achieve greatness is by focusing on the finer details of their piece of work and concentrating on making the subtleties really shine. One web designer who really excels at creating work with a fucus on subtleties is Matthew Smith. The project that immediately comes to mind is the Night for Adoption website he designed and built. I could talk all day about how amazing this site is, but staying focused on the subtlties, if you hover over the three buttons near the top of the page, you’ll notice the button fade to its hover state.. Unlike your run-of-the-mill standard button that does an abrupt on/off switch, these buttons transition from one gradient to another seamlessly. Also, if you look at the text inside each button, not only do the colors fade smoothly, but the text-shadow behind the text also fades.
The attention Matthew adds to the details of this design really make the best designed sites on the web today.
In hip hop the subtleties are just as important. One of my favorite artists of all time, who was a master of creating layered detailed work is the late J. Dilla. If your not familiar with J.Dilla’s work, hip hop fan or not, I suggest you buy his album Donuts and take a listen. All of Dilla’s work exudes greatness, but for the case of this example, one song that comes to mind is the track Stop, on the Donuts album. In the beginning of the song there is a sample with the lyrics “Is Death Real?.” Most people wouldn’t really pay too much attention to that line and figure its just a random sample of another line in a song, but in reality Dilla took several samples from different songs to create that small line. The song was created when Dilla’s health was on the decline and he was questioning his down death and adding these emotions into his music. Small subtleties like the previous example show how much time and attention Dilla added into his work and how even a short three word sample was created from various sources to achieve a sound he was looking for.
J. Dilla - Stop
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Both are rapidly evolving
Like all forms of music hiphop is ever changing. People have different opinions of its changing for the better or for the worse, but also similar to most genres every older generation feels that the younger generation is out of touch. In hiphop this is definitely the case. People like myself, who grew up listening to hiphop in the 90s, feel that hiphop has been degraded to a commercial genre and true artistic talent is outweighed in-favor of mainstream success and appeal. Some feel as though popular mainstream acts like Soulja-boy don’t appreciate the values and traditions of the art form and produce music that lacks quality and substance. I do have to agree with this opinion, however in recent years there have been many up and comers that are creating music that brings the genre back to the “good-old-days” where hiphop was not only a sound, but a lifestyle. Artists like Curren$y, J. Cole and Mac Miller and are paving the way for a new generation of hiphop and creating music that not only embodies some of the traditions that defined the sound but also adding their own progressive sound to the mix.
J. Cole - I Get Up
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Curren$y - Breakfast
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Mac Miller - Live Free
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Its hard to deny or ignore the fast paced change in the field of web design and development. Currently, technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 are allowing designers and developers to push the bounds of what is possible on the display side of the web, and giving designers the ability to turn any design imaginable into a feasible working site. In previous years, where designers felt limited by the types of content they could display in a browser, to many designers felt the web was a burden. It was not flexible, not consistent and was turning into a mixture of bad practices and poor convention. Since the adoption and revival of web standards the industry and exploded with excitement and new technologies are being released almost on a daily basis that will enhance users experience on the web.
