Webmuseum.dk to Document the History of Web Design

Webmuseum.dk goes online in autumn 2008 with examples of the graphic and technological development of websites since the first days of the internet in the 1990s. The examples have been selected by curators with an emphasis on the development of web design.

By Anna Krarup Jensen

Autumn 2008 will see the opening of Webmuseum.dk with two exhibitions on technology and design developments in (mainly Danish) websites. The museum will be the first online museum to use curated works (exclusively websites) to present exhibitions on web development from the time when the web went graphic until today. Chronology is important, says Frank Engelbrecht, who is the project manager for Webmusem.dk.
“In the exhibition on technological milestones in particular, the timeline is crucial for keeping track of history. To a high degree, the artistic expression on a website is determined by what was technically feasible when the site was designed,” he says.

Webmuseum.dk will be the first web museum to feature curated exhibitions.
“There are web archives that feature thousands of examples of websites, but they have been selected and sorted by a search robot – there are no curators and no communication or presentation flow in their exhibitions. Naturally, it should be possible to create links and do searches across the exhibition web sites in the web museum, since that is one of the features offered by the online medium of the museum. On the other hand, we also want to maintain a fixed, curated flow, if only for a moment. We are, after all, presenting a story that we have put some thought into,” says Frank Engelbrecht.

The website ’Futuresfarmers’ from 1999/2000 represents a mix of Japanese Kawaii Style and American Hello Kitty Style. Organically shaped animals and LEGO-like figures float around weightlessly in a surrealist, pastel-coloured environment that has its own laws of gravity. The contact information is scattered all over the background, which creates a playful navigation, as in a computer game (http://futurefarmers.com).

Selection Criteria

In addition to Frank Engelbrecht, the current curators include Ida Engholm, an associate research professor at the Danish Centre of Design Research, Niels Brügger, a professor of media studies at Aarhus University, and Museum Director Christian Holmsted Olesen from the Danish Museum of Art & Design.
The website exhibits are selected with an overall emphasis on web design. All the featured sites were selected based on specific considerations about what makes the individual sites interesting.
“To qualify, a site had to contain something that is exemplary or characteristic, something that illustrates the medium and the development. The sites we select must be conceptually original, possess a quality with regard to their visual graphic expression, represent a functional or original solution to the navigation aspects, or display software innovation,” says Frank Engelbrecht.

For the opening exhibitions, some 150-200 websites have been selected; they are all placed into a context and accompanied with explanatory text. Some of the sites stem from the curators’ own archives, while others were found as the result of thorough research, but it may be necessary to put out a request for more sites from the public if the chronological representation turns out to have gaps.

Preserving Our Cultural Heritage

The initial funding for Webmuseum.dk comes from a grant from the Heritage Agency of Denmark. When the internet was launched in the 1990s, few gave any thought to preserving websites for posterity. Thus, until now there has been no single archive able that documents the development that Webmuseum.dk describes, and the museum therefore has a crucial role with regard to preservation and knowledge dissemination.
“Danish websites are part of Danish cultural heritage, so it’s important for us to document Danish web history in the museum as much as possible. However, not all aspects of web development are very strongly represented in Denmark. For example, many technological innovations emerged in the USA first, so we have also chosen to include non-Danish websites in order to tell those parts of the story,” says Frank Engelbrecht.

Privately run websites are a genre onto themselves, and they often draw their inspiration from everyday life. They reinterpret everything from the photo album and the business card to neighbourhood newsletters, shopping lists and personal ads. Here, the family website for the Madsen Smed family from 1995, which represents a new folksy and cultural form of expression and public appearance that was unknown in previous media. This is possibly Denmark’s first private website (http://smed.dalgashave.dk, kilde: Peder Madsen).

The Exhibitions

At the opening, the museum will feature two parallel exhibitions. One exhibition focuses on technological milestones in the graphic design development of the web since 1993, for example the development in browsers, flash and other functions.

The other exhibition focuses on genres and styles that have developed in the course of web history. Frank Engelbrecht explains that Webmuseum.dk includes examples of many different genres.
“The museum has examples of government sites, news sites, cultural institutions, and web agencies that have earned a place for their site in history through innovation – as well as home pages with an emphasis on home. Generally speaking, the more formal the website, the stronger the emphasis on design consistency – with government websites as a case in point,” he says.
“Stylistically, the exhibition also covers a lot of ground. Examples include the Swiss Style, which has a very clear graphic expression, and Pixel Style, which is a rather playful design approach, which clearly reveals that the website design consists of pixels. Or examples of websites as avant-garde art media,” says Frank Engelbrecht.

The exhibitions will also include video interviews with key individuals who were involved in or who followed developments in Denmark.
“In the chronological timeline, visitors will be able to access video interviews where a ‘live’ person discusses the part of development that he or she has personally witnessed,” Frank Engelbrecht explains.

A Future-Proof Website

The web museum’s own website is under construction with assistance from a web agency. In addition to being able to handle a database of the many “works”, the website should also be easy to navigate. As design is the focal point of the exhibitions, naturally, a great deal of consideration goes into the design of the museum’s own website.
“Graphically, the museum’s own site should be as ‘neutral’ as possible. This means that it shouldn’t be so slick and modern that the design ‘ages’ too quickly. We aim to design a future-proof site with a design that can last for many years to come,” says Frank Engelbrecht.

The ‘kK10k-site’ is an example of the Pixel Style, where all the elements are clearly constructed of pixels in a kilobyte-miniaturised user interface (the name k10k indicates the low number of kilobytes that the site makes up). The k10k-site is a non-profit site where other web designers can present and test their ideas. Here the 1999 edition, produced in Denmark/London by the Danish designer duo Toke Nygaard and Michael Schmidt (http://k10k.net).

The Future of the Museum

Along with the opening of the online exhibition of Webmuseum.dk, there will also be a physical exhibition at the Danish Museum of Art & Design. The individual components of this exhibition have not yet been determined, but the online exhibition of Webmuseum.dk will be probably projected onto a wall at the Danish Museum of Art & Design along with selected texts, explanations and website examples.
Frank Engelbrecht is employed in a project position at the Danish Centre of Design Research. After the opening, the future operation of the web museum will be taken over by the Danish Museum of Art & Design. Exactly how interactive and user-driven the web museum will be in the future has yet to be determined. Frank Engelbrecht points out that there are certain restrictions.
“It’s interesting to make the museum partially user-driven, so that people can add new examples of websites. But the web museum is subject to the Danish Museum Act and the Act on Processing of Personal Data, which puts certain restrictions on what can in fact be displayed. The legal aspects may pose quite a challenge, since it’s also necessary to obtain permission for all the works that are put on display. Furthermore, the exhibitions will continue to represent some degree of curation to ensure that the knowledge that is collected can be disseminated and presented within a coherent framework,” says Frank Engelbrecht.