There must be something in the air. My Manifesto was a revelation for me — it gave me very good reason to launch a personal website that most designers would call unfinished, or at least unfinished-looking.
Now Mat Marquis has written a new tome for the A Book Apart series titled simply “Image Performance” which I am sure is anything but simple. His one page on the book and the impetus behind it feels familiar, but better articulated:
Below the surface—that’s where the meaning is. To build a page that can be easily parsed by assistive technologies is to contribute to a more inclusive web; to render a page more performantly is to broaden the web’s reach. To think too shallowly about a project means nudging the larger web in the same direction: toward something meant not for all, but for some; toward something meant only for those who experience it the way we do.
— Mat Marquis, homepage promotion for his new book “Image Performance”
I like to think this might be a trend that I happen to be jumping upon. A very positive one.