As of last year, there are over 100 million registered MySpace users. Much of the success MySpace enjoys is owed to the ability it gives people to customize their “spaces”. The only thing forbidden to manipulate are the revenue generating ads.
All else—every element on the page—is fair game for anyone with a little knowledge of HTML and CSS or the willingness to spend some time on google, searching for code that does what the want it to do.
But the emphasis MySpace has placed on customization has revealed a serious problem. If the profiles on MySpace are any indication, most of the population has absolutely no understanding of even the most basic design principals, let alone any aesthetic sense. Supposedly having a profile page that includes distracting background images, gaudy graphics, frenetic and useless animated gifts, and headache inducing font colors means you’re the man.
And visual aesthetics USN’t the only victim. Usability and accessibility get the shaft too. Since it’s so easy to just start uploading files to your page that profile pages frequently suffer under the weight of multiple videos and audio clips all vying for your, and your bandwidth’s attention at the same time. Part of the problem is that MySpace allows users to place over sized images and banners in their comments, which are displayed by default on your profile.
It’s gotten so bad that PC magazine puts it this way. The majority of MySpace pages look like “…a teenager’s bedroom after a tornado–a swirl of clashing backgrounds, boxes stacked inside other boxes, massive photos, and sonic disturbance. Try loading a few of those pages at once and watch what happens to your CPU…"
Is there any hope out there? Will all these young designers making a mockery of the web now ever learn, or, as Jill Christine Carpenter succinctly puts it here, is the future going to “end up looking like the main lobby of a Las Vegas casino circa 1965. Lots of wild wallpaper covering everything, blinking signs, scrolling animated banners, flaming spinning headlines, sparkles, and borderline porn sprinkled hither and yon, just for the heck of it.”
You make an interesting point in your post. I think it’s true that there is a trend in not showing an interest on doing things “well”, that is, at least spending some time learning how it’s been done so far and then building up from there, with some kind of criteria and some taste for the craft… It does not only show in design, I think it happens in many aspects of modern societies. A funny coincidence: this past weekend I saw a movie called “Idiocracy” which raises the same concern, and it shows a society, 500 years into the future, where all these fears have turned into reality…
Yes, most are pain on the eyes and there are very few layouts (sans the paid corporate ones) that we’d consider impressive. But, wrangling together a custom myspace layout is not the easiest of tasks. Not only is an eye for design necessary, there is also the insertion of css, specifically, knowing what code you’re allowed to insert. Either you manipulate/style the default html tables that are spit out, or you throw everything to the side and insert your own structure.
I always thought it would be interesting to gather a showcase of the best myspace layouts (a la css zen garden).