An Attempt at Exhausting Oneself

An eight-week course to explore the versatility of HTML and CSS, critically analyze the unique characteristics of the web medium, and establish yourself as a thoughtful designer who considers ethics and sustainability.

Coding Year 3, Quentin Creuzet
Graphic Design Department, KABK, The Hague
Mondays & Tuesdays, 13:30—17:30
Are.na channel with resources and references

Please arrive on time (13:30) for each course and get in touch as soon as you can to notify me of your absence or lateness

Last update: 03.11.2025 at 11:12
Typeface: PoW Garnier
The size of this webpage is 122KB

Course Overview

What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines. Railway trains only begin to exist when they are derailed, and the more passengers that are killed, the more the trains exist. Aeroplanes achieve existence only when they are hijacked. The one and only destiny of motor-cars is to drive into plane trees. […] What’s really going on, what we’re experiencing, the rest, all the rest, where is it? How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs every day: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?

Georges Perec, Approaches to What? from L’Infra-ordinaire, translated and published in English in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, 1975.

Social media has made visible something that was never new but is now undeniable: the need to curate ourselves in digital spaces that function simultaneously as reflection and alternative to so-called “real” life (IRL). Michel Foucault and Judith Butler understood this long before Instagram—the performative nature of identity itself. Yet what digital platforms have done is made this performance explicit, almost mandatory, while simultaneously promising us that technology will help us know ourselves better. We track our sleep, our heart rate, our running routes. We broadcast these metrics as markers of authenticity. Strava, Spotify, Apple Health: these platforms blur the line between self-knowledge and public performance. In doing so, they affirm a peculiar modern fantasy—that there exists a perfected, knowable, quantifiable version of ourselves worth sharing.

Algorithmically curated feeds like TikTok’s — and even ones like Spotify’s and Tinder’s — can connect us with people and ideas that expand our worlds and minds while also making us feel more seen and less alone. But they can also make us feel really alienated, misunderstood, and commodified when they use our own data to show a warped version of ourselves.

Michelle Santiago Cortés, “Because Your Algorithm Says So” on The Cut, published on February 8, 2022.

But something essential slips through this apparatus. Big Data companies excel at monitoring every trace of our behavior—online and offline—to construct increasingly precise portraits that serve their interests, not ours. Artificial intelligence refines these portraits further. Yet for all their precision, they cannot capture what remains fundamentally human about us: the fluidity, the indecisiveness, the contradictions, the moments when we do not cohere into a coherent identity at all.

It may seem that social media, by making social interaction asynchronous, shifting a portion of it online to an indefinite “virtual” space, and subjecting it all to constant monitoring, measurement, and assessment would not be a recipe for producing a sense of personal continuity. The way our self-expression gets ranked in likes and shares in social media would seem to subordinate identity to competition over metricized attention, dividing peers into winners and losers. And the creation of identity in the form of a data archive would seem to fashion not a grounded self but an always incomplete and inadequate double — a “self partially forced from the body.” You are always in danger of being confronted with your incohesiveness, with evidence of a past self now rejected or a misinterpreted, misprocessed version of one’s archive being distributed as the real you.

Rob Horning, “Sick of Myself” on Real Life Magazine, published on May 17, 2017.

Drawing on the work of French writer Georges Perec, known for his systematic explorations of the infra-ordinary—”that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance”—and on the American avant-garde poet Bernadette Mayer’s experiments with memory and journaling practices, this assignment invites you to ask: what if a website could operate as a counter-space to social media? Not a platform for extraordinary moments, but an archive of the mundane.

transparency has become an exercise in addressing biases (I am writing in English and using digital mediums) and in trying to improve as a person and be accountable to myself, others and through time. It’s also about letting go, as in accepting that identity is dynamic and fluid, that all portrayals are biased, that we don’t have that much control of other people’s interpretations about us, and that their portrayals are as valid as ours.

Aarón Montoya-Moraga, “Self-portrait in Open Source (Unfinished)” in Adjacent 4: Bodies and Borders, published in October 2018.

Rather than performing perfection, you are invited to explore how constraint-based, programmatic, and systematic processes can unveil neglected aspects of existence. These methods—the very rigor and limitation that might seem opposing to spontaneity—can paradoxically reveal what algorithmic systems miss: the texture of daily life, the unspectacular, the overlooked.

Taking the words of Redell Olsen about literature, you are asked to create a website that acts “as an enclosure or provisional park for an already existing wilderness that cannot definitively be contained.” A website that would become a small-scale alternative to the logic of social media platforms—a space organized not around engagement metrics or the extraordinariness of content, but around language, text, and the careful documentation of what it means to move through the world.

Language is laggy, boundless, bounded, overlapping, constrained, situated, uttered anywhere, everywhere, embedded, becoming. Extending ourselves onto a website might not only be an interior, individual practice of preservation, but part of a broader non-linear history that welcomes many visibilities, each with countless lines and opacities.

Chia Amisola, Domain Naming, published in February 2024.

Assignment Brief

Each of you will create a website that serves as an inventory of your daily life, highlighting elements that are often unnoticed and unpublicized. Your goal is to collect a substantial amount of these elements over time. You have the freedom to choose the content, themes, and formats for your website and can structure your data in any way you prefer.
Your website should be no more than 10MB (10,000KB) in total size and should be created using only HTML and CSS. JavaScript is not allowed.

Step 1, Week 1
Define your System

Before you begin collecting data, you must define the system through which you will observe and document your daily life. What constitutes the “infra-ordinary” for you? What aspects of your existence do you wish to inventory?
Consider developing a constraint-based method inspired by Perec or Mayer. This might be a temporal constraint—documenting something every hour, every Tuesday, every time you eat—or a spatial constraint where you record everything you notice in a specific location, or a categorical constraint that focuses on particular types of moments: all the things you throw away, all the questions you ask yourself, all the moments of boredom. You might also develop a procedural constraint, recording only through lists, measurements, or overheard conversations.

Step 2, Weeks 2–3
Collect and Accumulate

Begin your systematic documentation. The goal is accumulation rather than curation—gathering a substantial body of material that reflects the texture of daily life over time. Aim to collect data for at least two weeks, though longer periods will yield richer results.
As you collect, think about the unique characteristics of web-based documentation. How does the digital format shape what you can document? What forms can your documentation take—text, image, list, table, timestamp, measurement, description? How do the 10MB size constraints affect your collecting practices? What gets left out, and what does that absence reveal?

Step 3, Week 3
Develop your Taxonomy

With your collected material in hand, develop the organizational structure for your website. How will you categorize, index, and present this inventory? Your taxonomy is not neutral—it reveals your values, priorities, and understanding of the material.
Think about whether you will organize chronologically or thematically, hierarchically or flatly. Consider how visitors will move through your material and what connections or patterns you want to reveal—or obscure. Your organizational system might be linear, allowing visitors to progress through your documentation in a predetermined order, or it might be rhizomatic, offering multiple entry points and pathways through the same content. The structure you choose will shape what can be seen and understood.

Step 4, Weeks 4-5
Design without Designing

Create the visual and interactive language of your website without using graphic design software. The spirit of this assignment is amateurish in the best sense—it seeks to break free from the polished aesthetics of professional web design and social media platforms.
Your design decisions should emerge from the materiality of HTML and CSS themselves, the constraints of the 10MB file size, the nature of your content and taxonomy, and the methods available to you without JavaScript. Consider typography as a primary design element—font choices, sizes, spacing, and line length all shape how your content is read. Think about color and contrast, layout and composition, rhythm and pacing as information unfolds across the page. How do these elements relate to the content itself?

Step 5, Weeks 6-7
Build and Refine

Develop your website using HTML and CSS. Remember that the entire website must be 10MB at most. Pay attention to clean, well-structured HTML and efficient CSS without unnecessary redundancy. Optimize file sizes for images or other assets, and test functionality across different screen sizes.
Think about how visitors enter and navigate your website and how the interface guides—or doesn’t guide—reading and exploration. The relationship between interface and content matters. Consider moments of surprise, friction, or revelation. Pay close attention to microtypography and detail: line length, leading, and spacing; hierarchy and emphasis; link styling and hover states; margins, padding, and negative space. Even an amateur website is fundamentally a graphic artifact, and your interface influences the reading and understanding of your content.

Step 6, Week 8
Final Presentation

Show your website to the class during a 12-minute presentation. Address what you chose to document and why, how your constraint or system shaped what you observed, and what you discovered through the process of systematic observation. Discuss how the technical and size constraints affected your design decisions and what your website reveals—or conceals—about the infra-ordinary of your life. Be prepared to discuss how your approach differs from social media documentation and the gap between what you intended to create and what emerged through the process.

Learning Goals

Develop a contemporary and critical understanding of the web and technology by exploring new and non-normative theories.
Deepen technical and conceptual knowledge of the web and design through a disruptive, critical and experimental approach.
Explore web tools and their unique constraints, and enhance understanding of the structures and paradigms specific to this medium.
Overcome constraints by pushing the limits of what is possible, without fear of failure.
Develop an open and generous attitude towards your fellow students, and approach design work in a collaborative manner that fosters mutual help.
Propose innovative, creative, and unique design solutions that adhere to ethical, social, and sustainable principles.

Readings

You will be expected to read three texts during the block. During small group and individual talks, we will discuss and reflect on these texts in relation to your concepts, process and experiments in development.

Chia Amisola, Domain Naming, published in February 2024, Link
Laurel Schwulst, “My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?”, originally published on The Creative Independent on May 21, 2018, Link
Ruben Pater, Chapter “The Designer as Amateur” in Caps Lock: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and how to Escape it, published by Valiz in 2021, Link

Schedule

Block 2 (3B)

03.11.2025

13:30

Lecture
Introduction to the assignment

15:00

Individual talks
How do you feel about coding, particularly for the web? Are you interested in or fascinated by digital culture? Present a project from the last 12 months that represents the best your practice. (all students, 5 minutes per student)

04.11.2025

13:30

Lecture
How to create a clean coding environment?

14:00

Group talks
Discuss your first intuitions about what you would like to document for this assignment. (groups of 5 students, 10 minutes per student)

For week 2
Write a proposal of ~200-300 words that outlines what you will document and why. Describe the constraint or system you will use to collect this data, the anticipated structure and taxonomy of your website, and your relationship to this material. How does the constraint reveal something that free-form documentation would miss? How might systematic observation make visible what usually remains invisible?

10.11.2025

13:30

Lecture
Why shouldn’t I use “position: absolute”?

14:00

Lecture
On feedback

14:30

Peer feedbacks
Present your idea to your peers and share ways of improving it through collective talks

11.11.2025

13:30

Lecture
What is image compression?

14:00

Group talks
Clearly present your idea and emphasize the key points of your webzine, using the text you have written as a foundation (groups of 5 students, 8 minutes per student)

For week 3
Produce a raw archive of your collected material, organized according to your chosen system. This might take the form of text files, spreadsheets, folders of images, or handwritten notes to be digitized. You are not yet designing; you are observing and recording. What emerges when you commit to this practice over time? Does the constraint become generative or restrictive? Does the act of systematic observation change your relationship to the mundane?

17.11.2025

No class
Class moved to 01.12 for Midway Presentations

18.11.2025

13:30

Workshop
With Stefaniia Bodnia, you will use the work of Bernadette Mayer to explore how poetry and typography can intersect on the web.

For week 4
Create a sitemap or structural diagram showing how your content will be organized and accessed. This should include your main organizational principles, the navigation structure, the relationship between different sections or entries, and how your taxonomy reflects or resists typical web conventions. What does your organizational system reveal about how you understand your own life? Does it impose order on chaos, or does it preserve the messiness?

24.11.2025

13:30

Lecture
What is the “handmade web”?

14:00

Peer feedbacks
Present your idea to your peers and share ways of improving it through collective talks

25.11.2025

13:30

Lecture
What is a “brutalist” website?

14:00

Group talks
Present your archive of collected material and your sitemap and discuss how the system you built influenced it. (groups of 5 students, 8 minutes per student)

For week 5
Prepare a 10-minute presentation outlining your research and experiments. You will need to present visual materials and/or coded prototypes illustrating your idea and discuss the next steps in your process.

01.12.2025

9:30

Midway presentations
3 students

10:30

Midway presentations
3 students

11:30

Midway presentations
3 students

13:30

Midway presentations
3 students

14:30

Midway presentations
3 students

15:30

Midway presentations
3 students

16:30

Midway presentations
3 students

02.12.2025

13:30

Lecture
How can the web be ethical?

14:00

Individual talks
Reflect on the feedback you received during your Midway presentation and outline your next steps. (all students, 8 minutes per student)

For week 6
Produce visual sketches, mockups, or prototypes showing your design approach. These might be hand-drawn, created in HTML/CSS directly, or developed through other non-traditional means. Can a website feel intimate, personal, and unpolished in ways that resist the homogenizing force of platform design?

08.12.2025

13:30

Lecture
TBD

14:00

Anonymous peer feedbacks
Display the visuals you prepared to a group of students without providing any additional explanations, and provide feedback on the other students’ work

09.12.2025

13:30

Lecture
TBD

14:00

Group talks
Present your visuals and indicate how you respond to the feedbacks you received from other students. Additionally, discuss any challenges you anticipate encountering during the coding of your website (all students, 8 minutes per student)

For week 7
Develop your website using HTML and CSS. Pay close attention to microtypography and detail: line length, leading, and spacing; hierarchy and emphasis; link styling and hover states; margins, padding, and negative space. The website should be fully functional, with all technical constraints met. Does your interface fade into the background or assert itself? Does it replicate familiar web patterns or resist them?

15.12.2025

13:30

Lecture
How to publish a static HTML website?

15:00

Individual talks
Present what is one problem you don’t manage to solve and why (8 students, 12 minutes per student)

16.12.2025

13:30

Lecture
How can I improve my presentations?

14:00

Individual talks
Present what is one problem you don’t manage to solve and why (8 students, 12 minutes per student)

For week 8
Publish your website online and share me the link and a folder with your full website that shouldn’t be bigger than 10MB (10,000KB). Prepare a 12-minute final presentation of your work, focusing on your process, your research and your experiments. Fill in the Self-assessment form, based on the criteria listed below.