Truematter Blog

The Web changes every day. As new technologies and methodologies arise, former industry standards fall by the wayside in favor of more efficient and effective tools. 

Staying up to date with the latest trends and best-practices of the Web helps you stay relevant and ensures your work can stand up when compared to sites with ten times your project budget. 

One of the best ways to improve the your work is to take the time to see the envelope-pushing things your peers are doing. Web-focused conferences (such as the phenomenal Converge SE 2013, hosted right here in Columbia, South Carolina) provide this opportunity in spades. 

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It’s easy to get into a rhythm building websites and forget that if the Web were a boy, he wouldn’t be allowed to buy alcohol. Twenty years ago this week, CERN released the World Wide Web into the public domain, a move that dramatically accelerated the proliferation of the Web.

Twenty years is barely a blip.

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Our office field trip last fall to Columbia’s annual Greek Festival was filled with some interesting conversation. While our primary motivation may have been sampling the souvlaki and baklava, we also planned to check out the newly renovated Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and the iconography adorning its walls and ceiling. This sparked the big question: “Art” or design?

As residents of a small southeastern city, it’s an unusual treat to peruse large-scale religious art on a lunch break. For me, this was an experience previously reserved for trips to Europe and larger stateside metropolitan areas. We took advantage of the opportunity and spent a good while studying the beautiful details.

Holy Trinity’s muralled icons communicate a range of ideas and narratives. Modeled after the classic Paleologian style, the dome displays a hierarchy of holy figures—Jesus in the center circled by angels, visions of the Biblical apocalypse, and an outer ring of apostles. Alcoves around the dome offer vignettes of the lives and works of Paul and other early evangelists. Mary, the god-birthing mother, resides over the altar with outstretched arms, the Christ child seated on her lap.

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