and now for a completely out of the blue rant about scrapbooking
specifically, yes I'm on instagram, and there's this whole...aesthetic that is not specific to that, but I see it most highly concentrated there, where the reigning design choice seems to be extremely textured, tons of "whitespace", an empty ~inspirational~ quote that is as connected to anything concrete as an escaped party balloon in the wild blue yonder.
Layers and layers of paper and worse, thicker materials, separated by those little styrofoam or rubber dots to give it "volume" and "pop" it even further out so every page is 3 inches thick - it's a book, it's not going to lay flat, even very sturdy 120lb paper will buckle unpleasantly eventually, even when stored upright. Ugly fringes, relying on someone else's produced scrapbooking paper to fill the page, using those premade stickers that are cute but they're so generic. Colour just flung on the page - how much pastel explosion is enough? And the only text on the page being stupid quotes. Oh my god having just vented all that I think I've realized what the core problem is - scrapbooking takes a long time and it's supposed to be a way to record moments you want to remember. So instead of using your own words and your own designs and your own colours and your own thoughts let's just slap on stuff bought from stores! I know I'm very text focused but that and your own photos probably are the strongest captures of memory and by just putting stupid things like ~live love laugh~ and its equivalent all over your expensive book all you've just done is stuff your personal moments into someone else's constructed little cage. With an average of 5 words per page, those photos better be pretty good at representation of that memory.
And FINALLY I'm starting to get frankly fed up with the ultra hyper feminine designs - everything, actually. I like polka dot, pastels, stripes, bows, lace, glitter, pretty much the whole nine yards, but trying to look at instagram and bloggers is like being slapped in the face with an extremely narrow - I don't know how to describe it, but idealized 1950's proscribed lifestyle/culture/everything. It's full of that pastel/flowery aesthetic and it's all lifestyle bloggers about their two perfect children and stay-at-home life and there's nothing inherently wrong with that but WHY IS IT EVERY SINGLE BLOG?
Crosspost: https://silverflight8.dreamwidth.org/181856.html.
Layers and layers of paper and worse, thicker materials, separated by those little styrofoam or rubber dots to give it "volume" and "pop" it even further out so every page is 3 inches thick - it's a book, it's not going to lay flat, even very sturdy 120lb paper will buckle unpleasantly eventually, even when stored upright. Ugly fringes, relying on someone else's produced scrapbooking paper to fill the page, using those premade stickers that are cute but they're so generic. Colour just flung on the page - how much pastel explosion is enough? And the only text on the page being stupid quotes. Oh my god having just vented all that I think I've realized what the core problem is - scrapbooking takes a long time and it's supposed to be a way to record moments you want to remember. So instead of using your own words and your own designs and your own colours and your own thoughts let's just slap on stuff bought from stores! I know I'm very text focused but that and your own photos probably are the strongest captures of memory and by just putting stupid things like ~live love laugh~ and its equivalent all over your expensive book all you've just done is stuff your personal moments into someone else's constructed little cage. With an average of 5 words per page, those photos better be pretty good at representation of that memory.
And FINALLY I'm starting to get frankly fed up with the ultra hyper feminine designs - everything, actually. I like polka dot, pastels, stripes, bows, lace, glitter, pretty much the whole nine yards, but trying to look at instagram and bloggers is like being slapped in the face with an extremely narrow - I don't know how to describe it, but idealized 1950's proscribed lifestyle/culture/everything. It's full of that pastel/flowery aesthetic and it's all lifestyle bloggers about their two perfect children and stay-at-home life and there's nothing inherently wrong with that but WHY IS IT EVERY SINGLE BLOG?
Crosspost: https://silverflight8.dreamwidth.org/181856.html.