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Hi everyone,
Welcome to our class newsletter, which we are calling “Gift Basket.” This is the first issue —
We are the Spring 2025 class officially titled VIS 208. Graphic Design: Link, at Princeton University, taught by Laurel Schwulst (who is writing this introduction). This semester, the theme for the class is “Gifting.” We are exploring websites & everyday digital tools as opportunities for generosity...
In that line of thinking, we wondered: Can a newsletter feel like a gift? And while we’re at it, what makes a good gift, anyway?
(Will put an image here, TBD)
(Something here about why Laurel decided Gifting as the theme for this year. And share a little about creating calendars, spheres, etc.)
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During the first class, I showed some examples of what I mean by gifting websites, or using everyday digital tools as opportunitites for generosity. One concrete example was the website “You are Laurel, right?” created for me on my birthday by my friend and fellow web designer Min Guhong, based in Seoul.
As a surprise after the first class, Ben created a version of this site for his mom on her birthday, February 4th. It's called, “You are mom, right?” It was exciting to see this, so I asked Ben a few questions about the site:
Laurel: How did your mom respond to receiving the website?Ben: My mom was very excited to receive the surprise birthday website. She remarked that she was curious about the different paths she could navigate through and admitted to refreshing and re-trying different routes to see all the content. At first she thought that I had made the website with a third-party tool, and she was impressed to learn that I used HTML/CSS to create it. I think this helped her see the website as a more personal gift that was crafted by me for her.
L: How specifically did you send it to her?
B: I sent a link to her over text yesterday and told her to wait until tomorrow (her birthday) to open it. She said it was a good exercise of patience!
L: What was the process of creating the site like?
B: It was really enjoyable to build the website. I used the website (on neocities) your friend had made you as a template for the html/css, but I adapted the logic, presentation, style, and content. For the design, I pulled some boilerplate css templates and adapted them to show different colors and fonts. To get the photos I searched through my phone and asked my siblings to share any they had. I tried for a while to get audio playing of me singing happy birthday, but I couldn't get it to work without paying for a subscription to neocities.
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Things That Originated As Gifts
Wordle - Josh Wardle, the creator of the game Wordle, originally meant to make it as a fun pastime for him and his partner. It went through many years of sitting idly after his partner sorted the list of 5 letter words into playable and unplayable words, and eventually found a rise with his friends and family. This small gift for someone Josh appreciated eventually spanned to being a gift for the world, creating many different genres of the game he developed such as Worldle, Quordle, and Squirdle
Baking Soda - Alfred Bird was an English chemist and food scientist who changed the way of cooking just to help his wife with her dietary restrictions. In particular, she was allergic to yeast and eggs, and so he created the first form of baking powder. Nowadays, baking soda is a staple in many dishes, and allows not only his wife but others with the same dietary restrictions to savor the same treats as others.
Tetris - Alexey Pajitnov originally created tetris for the purpose of entertaining him and his colleagues at the Soviet Union back in 1980, but it ended up taking the world by storm. It eventually caused conflict between Russia and other countries trying to take Tetris for themselves, but ended up bringing more people together in the modern day as the original tetris still holds yearly tournaments full of comradery and friendly competition.
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Thanks to the newsletter committee (Raymond, Max, Allen) for helping bring Gift Basket, Issue One to life. How does the committee approach gifting?
Raymond just asks the person what they want...
Max handmakes all gifts...
Allen follows Omar’s three steps...
Signing off,
Laurel & Max
This is the Spring 2025 "Gift Basket" newsletter, sent by the VIS 208.
Graphic Design: Link (Gifting) class at Princeton University. This is issue 1 of
8. This issue was written by Laurel and Max. Thank you for reading!