Ally's Process Journal

Handmade Websites Reflection

When I first heard Professor Schwulst use the word “handmade website,” I was baffled. How can a website be handmade? I guess if you have to code the website yourself to create the website, you could call that handmade. However, I normally thought of handmade goods as something tangible and with a touch of “humanity,” such as a handmade soap or a handmade tote bag. The websites that I knew of had neither qualities. However, as I saw what the professor called “handmade websites,” I started to understand why they would be called handmade. The unconventional and somewhat unorderly look of these websites gave them a human-touch, and although not tangible, these websites felt like art—which attributed them a sense of tangibility.

For such reasons, I was surprised to find that J. R. Carpenter, the creator of the term “handmade web,” had similar intentions in mind when evoking the term. There were some parts I did not think about but thoroughly enjoyed, such as his intention to “suggest slowness and smallness as a form of resistance” through the evoking of the term. On the other side, there were some parts of the article that I struggled to follow, especially areas that use technical jargon like “Web 1.0” or “Level 4 Netscape.” I hope to become more familiar with these terms as I progress through this course.