RESOURCE SYSTEMS
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| Status |
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Site version: 2.0
Document version: 1.0P
Created: 2001-11-03
Changed: 2001-11-03
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What Is Goth?
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| Is It Dark and Sinister, Just Cool, or Merely a
Design Option? |
By Resource Systems
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The earliest days of the World Wide Web (1992-95)
provided essentially one background color for Web pages, at
least by default: grey. By 1995 or so, you could create a
background graphic and the BACKGROUND="nameoffile.gif"
offered an alternative. Or, in the interest of a briefer load
time, you could specify a Websafe background color in place
of a background file; in other words, BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
for a white background or BGCOLOR="#000000" for
a black one.
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| The first generation of geek designers to so use this option
often chose the latter, because it was considered "GOTH."
As in "gothic," you ask? I doubt it. As in "VisiGoth?"
Perhaps. But black provided a rich saturation, helped other
colors stand out and just looked cool |
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| The Dark, Spiritual Connotation |
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But does a Goth background on a Website give it Satanic overtones?
Only if you want it to be, I suspect. If you want to talk
about Spiritual issues, you should explore other sites so
focused (including one of my own under
development. And it, by the way, chooses light over darkness.
In both contexts.)
The deadly Columbine twosome of 1999, as I recall
from news accounts, dressed as Goth cultists, only further
purveying such symbolism. There is enough Goth, intentional
or otherwise, in Website design to diminish any consistent
correlation it might suggest with the Prince of Darkness.
This site, for one, does not intend to lead
its readers along the way of darkness, either implicitly through
color choice or images, or explicitly through its text content.
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But the most practical argument against a black
background on the Web is that it makes text more difficult
to read. So if you choose to use a black background, as I
have with this site, it argues for providing links to "printer-friendly"
versions of pages likely to be sent to a printer. After all,
most printers (and browsers other than recent versions of
Internet Explorer) dislike white-on-black pages even more
than the human eye.
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