Where have all the African American web designers gone?

When one takes a little time to peruse the ‘Net and look around at all the usual trendy sites on ground-breaking design [Zeldman, AListApart, Eric Meyer, Dan Benjamin just to name a few], I see no black faces. No faces of color. And let me state, before continuing, I do not believe that any of these individuals or web sites linked to here in this article are out to purposely make this a reality or in anyway have had a direct hand in creating this absence. Rather, we wish to illustrate that when we look around for bright faces of web design, they’re white, not black.

Most of what is studied is looking at constructs and how they’re nested in social contexts. Asking how did this come to be? Why? How? Where is it going? When applying these same questions to Blackamericans and web design, I am left feeling puzzled and bewildered at the absence of one prominent black web designer. It could very well be that the talented black web designers are all too busy making beautiful web sites and not taking public credit for their work or maybe it’s something else.

When we look around at other sectors of society as to why there is a woeful absence of black folks in participation, that conditions are usually fairly clear. And let me say here that the follow is a hypothesis, a best guest, a starting point of looking at this issue.

It is not believed that black folks are absent from web design due to a conscious effort to disengage from it. Most likely it may have to do with socio-economic issues. For blacks who are hailing from deprived urban centers, web design may simply not be on their radar. Not having the money to invest in computers, Internet access [preferably high-speed], and an education that would point them in the direction of design [web or otherwise], all lead me to think that this may be part of the problem. So, when philanthropic organizations are looking to invest money in these depressed areas, are they thinking to encourage blacks to take part of the digital revolution and get involved in the web or is this too off the radar.

With that being sad, I did come across a posting on a website regarding a web summit/conference, where on the advertising poster, it featured a caricature of a black man along with the words, “Pimp’d“.

This is a curiosity as it featured a stereotypical portrayal of an African-American, playing as a pimp, with a fedora hat and a drink in his hand. My immediate thought was not that it was inherently racist, but that how many black web designers would be attending this event? My best guess would be not many, and yet they have chosen a sort of “black mascot” to represent the coolness factor of the event. My second thought was that it was inherently racist.

Asian Design meets American Architecture

At first glance, Los Angeles might seem like the last place anyone would visit for architectural inspiration: Patchwork quilts of parking lots and strip malls alternate with vast carpets of matching faux-Mediterranean subdivisions, all knit together by a web of eight-lane freeways. But look closely and you’ll see daring architecture dotting the scrubby hillsides. There are Frank Lloyd Wright homes that resemble Mayan temples, John Lautner’s UFO-inspired residences from the space-obsessed 1960s, and turn-of-the-millennium deconstructions, such as Frank Gehry’s luminous Walt Disney Concert Hall. “In Los Angeles, there is always a chance,” says Richard Weinstein, a transplanted New Yorker who serves as the vice chair of architecture and urban design at UCLA. “The place is so full of holes and so badly governed,” he adds dryly, “that you can occasionally drive a great building into the gaps.”

That drive is, more and more, coming from the other side of the Pacific. Last year, both UCLA and its crosstown rival, the University of Southern California, named new directors to their architecture programs — and both come from Asia. Hitoshi Abe, UCLA’s new chair, hails from Sendai, Japan, while USC’s dean, Qingyun Ma, keeps offices in his native Xi’an, China, and in Shanghai. The appointments represent an intriguing turn at a time when dynamic new architecture, wrestling with questions of history and urbanization, sprouts all over Asia — and as U.S. architectural programs come under fire from figures such as Rem Koolhaas, who told the Los Angeles Times that they were “shamefully focused on the West.” Says Abe: “Urban design has been Western-centric. Asia has a lot of energy right now, so we have to look there.”

One of Ma’s core ideas — the impermanence of architecture — has particular appeal for anyone who would be happy to see Los Angeles’ relentless sprawl bulldozed. Ma, 43, views today’s Western architecture as a descendant of the Greco-Roman tradition, which is all about building in stone and erecting things that are intended to last forever. (Which makes it all the more amusing that he’s an occasional collaborator of Koolhaas, creating mind-bending buildings, such as Beijing’s CCTV headquarters, that look as if they might fall down.) Clearly a son of modern China, he questions the West’s preservationist reflex. “Everything has a life cycle, as should buildings,” he says. “Preservation is an action in sacrifice of future possibilities. The future needs its own space.”

The wisdom of razing and rebuilding depends largely on context and execution, of course. Urban renewal failed in some U.S. cities, for instance, and won’t Beijing suffer by replacing its centuries-old hutongs with generic apartment buildings? Yet Ma doesn’t argue that we should jettison the past. His Thumb Island project near Shanghai modernizes the ancient Chinese reverence for landscape. Grass-carpeted knolls created by the undulating roof over a community center pair with a nearby lake, paying homage to the traditional coupling of mountain and water. Japanese architects have long had to figure out how to build attractive, functional living spaces on the most microscopic slices of land; it’s not uncommon for family homes to occupy just 300 square feet of earth.

“The elites from other cultures have been educated in the United Sates, but American leaders are never educated in other places,” Ma says. “If America wants to maintain its position, it has to shift. It can’t just be about muscle, but about leadership in the arts and the humanities.”

Barry Bergdoll, curator of architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, adds that L.A. “takes much greater risks than most East Coast cities. There’s a less conservative business climate.” That makes L.A. perfect for the kind of cross-cultural dialogue that Abe and Ma believe can help transform American architectural thinking. “Los Angeles is constantly making community. [People] are constantly cross-pollinating,” Ma says. Abe’s motivations are similar: “This city allows people to test ideas,” he says. “You can see so many different experiences.” And after a century of experimental architectural perspectives, L.A. now has two more.

“African Design Now” symposium to be held May 2011 in Lagos, Nigeria

…for designers in Architecture/Interiors; Product/Industrial Design; Graphics/ Visual Communications, and Fashion/Textiles African Design Now will be held May 2011 in Lagos, Nigeria. It broadly focuses on African designers – from Africa, the US, Europe, South America and the Caribbean- and other designers who have worked in Africa, are inspired by Africa and are of African heritage. It will include design critics, activists and thinkers about design.

African Design Now is the brainchild of Nigerian-American designer, cultural writer/publisher and entrepreneur, Atim Annette Oton who resides in Brooklyn, New York in collaboration with South African award-winning profile writer, cultural, music and social critic, Bongani Madondo, who resides in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Please feel to email me at atimoton@yahoo.com