Looking [a/t] TOKION
One of the main problems with design is that it necessarily has to deal with a constant negotiation within substance and style. Richard A. Lanham proposes an interesting system to read, qualify, analyze, dissect, the weight of these two realms in media: The Style/Substance Matrix.
In the words of this attention economist “style and substance, fluff and stuff are loose and baggy categories but useful ones even so. Important versus peripheral, planned versus spontaneous, natural versus mannered, appearance versus reality, inside versus outside, why versus how, manner versus matter: we must make such distinctions every day.” Especially if you are in the business of crafting media.
In this context, it is particularly difficult to conceive a magazine’s website, mostly if the magazine has a strong voice in both territories. This is why the all-new TOKION website designed by Tiffany Malakooti is such a great example of style that lets the substance flow.
An essential element of Lanham’s Style/Substance Matrix is the “A/T mixture,” which serves the purpose of calibrating the act of looking “at” or looking “through” media; the former being focused on aesthetics qualities while the latter concentrates on pure content, always with the premise that “no point of the spectrum is intrinsically evil or virtuous; it seeks to describe rather than to proscribe, to analyze rather than to condemn.” The new TOKION site let us read right at the middle of the spectrum, and we thank Malakooti for that, the TOKION persona is finally alive on the web.
