O_O long title alert! over the past few years, but over last year especially, i've been reliving nostalgia through archived pages of the old web. for context: i was a young kid in the early 00's and really loved the cute, hand crafted pixel sites dominated by mostly young women (guesstimated age range of about 14-25) from about the years of '02-'08. take my ranges with a grain of salt :-)

i've started two projects in response to this subculture of the web: the ichigo directory ¹ and the cutie archive. the directory, just a list of links categorized in some manner, is a bit easier for me to maintain and works as a starting point to surfing the cute web. the cutie archive is more of a visual archive (kinda like gifcities) and is a lot more work for me to maintain so i can't update it as much as i'd like @-@ i'm manually saving + keywording each image so the search function is somewhat workable, though cough cough i would love some help with back-end stuff if anyone is savvy >_>''

for a while i've been thinking of processing this era through an art historical perspective and putting together a zine? exploring the visual conventions since so much of the cute web was about creating pixel art! from layouts to buttons to adoptions to scribbles to cliques and so on.. there's a lot I can talk about!

some preliminary thoughts i have about eventually putting this together one day, someday:

• history&demographics: talk about history of old web, go over demographics
• kawaii web: my temporary coined term for this aesthetic :) talk about what is the kawaii web
• the cuteness factor: what makes something cute ?
• layout conventions: examine layout conventions. ie: iframes, pop-out layouts, "me/you/site" navigation
• buttons: i would love to have a HUGE collection of buttons, because simply there are so many. typical dimensions: 88x31, 32x32, 80x15, 130x55, etc~
• adoptables: pixels that you 'adopt' by putting them in your 'toybox' and link back to the creator. these are like the highlights of pixel sites:)
• scribbles: a sub-sect of adopts, which are typically larger pixels with looser, scribble-y outlines.
• cliques: cliques in this context can come in a few forms. a clique can be a graphic you put on your site to show off things you like (fandom, or cats/shopping/etc), but a clique can also be a prompt - like homes, jars, pills, trains, a flower garden, etc, in which you customize a template and trade it with others. you'd usually have a page dedicated to your creations & link to other creations.
• dolls/dollz: oh boy! this is a behemoth topic in its own right. there is a divide in the old web between "dollz" and "dolls". dollz are what you think of when you think of doll makers or The Palace. dolls are more unique and hand-drawn. people would create blank doll bases for others to draw on. people in the dolls community usually have a disdain for those into dollz. (being able to draw and create unique dolls was seen as more superior than frankensteining together dollz). on the topic of dollz: i'd like to go over the history of them & the different types of them too (preps, goths, silents, etc). i also want to go over sayclub/daum/etc dolls since they are also very different stylistically and are more of a 'third' category of dollsz:) agghh!!
• web goodies: from backgrounds to dividers to icons to enter signs and more, websites dedicated to providing graphics for your site were sozai sites.
• misc pages: quizes, likes/dislikes, jokes, err basically any page you'd might see across the cute web that aren't exactly graphic based:)
• affiliates: affies, sisters sites, etc. mutually linked sites!
• directories, topsites, & link exchanges: directories are websites dedicated to linking other cute sites, meanwhile topsites act similar but have the added function of voting for a site. more votes = more visibility. link exchanges are another way to gain traction! these are similar to webrings, so a script will put you in rotation of other sites.
• socials: felt it was worth mentioning materials that were meant to be used for social things - avatars for aim, livejournal, as well as the presence of private livejournals that you had to pay into to get access to pixel art.² this topic can also cover forums & forum signatures!
• cute web today: this is more of an afterthought, but personal sites have made a slow comeback and i can talk about the aesthetic evolution of this revival :p new html standards lets sites do more things the old web couldn't do! (no more table layouts..)

oops - that was quite a wall of text. these are the topics that i can think of right now, but i'm sure if i ever get further in this project i'll think of more. there's a lot to go over!

if anyone wants to reach out with some thoughts feel free to shoot me an email ~> m [at] cinni [dot] net

i leave you with this graphic i found today on my surfing adventures:

1. had to keep the naming convention true to that time - random japanese words abound :3↩

2. i personally was not familiar with these kinds of livejournals, until i learned about it from shelly.↩