July 20, 2026
Today's Slides Dev Notes Assignments Readings

Day 1: The Small Web

Today is less about “how” and more about “why.” We’ll dig into what it feels like to be a creative person making things for the web in an age when AI can generate code, designers are told to “stay in their lane,” and all the web’s starting to look the same.

We’ll talk about:

  • The classic assembly-line model of web design (designer → dev → launch) and how it causes silo-ing of creativity.

  • How the web, as a space, isn’t just one thing. It’s a city or a garden or a pile of books. It can be a highly personal, living material, not just an industrial machine.

  • When the web opened up in the 90s, it wasn’t the corporations we see now but personal, weird, handmade sites on platforms like GeoCities. A new vernacular emerged when everyone was allowed to play, not just the professional designers and makers.

  • The corporate web thrives on telling you “it’s too hard” so you’ll settle for being a perpetual renter on someone else’s platform. We’re here to push against that, and make things on our own terms.

Internet archaeology (afternoon): We’ll learn how to explore both the bygone web and the small web that exists on the fringes: the Internet Archive, The GeoCities (Restored) Gallery, Marginalia, and some webrings. By scrap-booking from these sources and seeing the more hand-crafted and personal web, we’ll start developing our own sensibilities for what our web could look like.

For details on today’s homework, head over to the assignments page and look for the assignments under this day. Also: check the requirements page tonight and finish your installs, because Day 2 starts with all of us building.

Last updated: July 20, 2026

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