Digital style history: the development of graphic design on the Internet

Since the appearance of the phenomenon of web design in the early 1990s, numerous ways of describing, viewing and instrumentalising this new design area have developed. However, so far few attempts have been made to develop analytic and reflective approaches to web design as an aesthetic phenomenon. The aim of this article is from an art historical perspective to focus on WWW as a graphic-aesthetic medium that can be examined as an object or work, and whose development can be described within the framework of design history. The main goal is to show how the study of the graphic design development of the Internet may benefit by employing a central concept from art and design theory, the concept of style. This is used as a dynamic principle for structuring, both in the description and analysis of web design and as a point of departure for a discussion of visual aesthetics and the context-dependent experiences of looking at web design.