JOSHUA DAVIS

Joshua Davis is one of the pioneers or fore fathers of web design as an art form. Josh is continually pushing the medium to new limits in a fast evolving media. A unique aspect about Joshua Davis as an artist in the web design field is his eagerness to reveal and share his methods and techniques. Go to the following sites to see some of his works:
praystation.com
once-upon-a-forest.com
cyphen.com
antiweb-chaos.com
kioken.com

In his works Joshua Davis is known to use systems of randomization also known as the chaos theory stemming from a mathematical equation. This chaotic randomization can attribute to his many spiraling and asymmetrical shapes and patterns he uses in his works. I like this a lot about him because he can often go past traditional grid structures and systems to create his designs and patterns. Davis explains his theory or “grid structure” for some of his designs as a systematic yet organic growth or evolution based of a starting shape or pattern. For instance, if he were to start with a oval or circle he would build up a grid off the building up or spiraling out of that circle or oval. From that basic pattern Davis would find a grid to exploit. It is a bit complicated to me, but this is why he is so famous.
From what I gathered Joshua Davis has a couple of major influence for his art style and love for technology. The first is his love for classic video games. The types of classic video games that he mostly is inspired by are sprite based and simplistic like PONG, PAC MAN, or SPACE INVADERS. His second major influence is the modern artist popularized from in the 1940’s and 1950’s Jackson Pollock. The “painter that rarely touched the canvas” used action painting and movement as emphasis to his creative endeavors. Davis admits that he admires Pollock’s artistry in this quote: “Among modern artists, I conceptually identify with Jackson Pollock — not that I'm a particular fan of his visual style, but because he always identified himself as a painter, even though a lot of the time his brush never hit the canvas. There's something in that disconnect — not using a brush or tool in traditional methods.” I belief that is how Joshua Davis views himself as still a sort of painter or illustrator even though his most acclaimed works have no true brushstrokes and are all digital.
Davis’ influences can be seen everywhere on the web and in print design. A few years back a lot of commercial seemed to have a good deal asymmetrical dynamic patterns that can be easily related back to Davis. Also I have noticed that websites seem to move away from the hard mechanically color palettes like black silver grey (“futuristic colors”) toward softer color palettes, and I see that Davis has done that since his earliest designs, which are most vividly captured at once upon a forest and to a lesser extend praystation. I admire his work a lot because what he does seems so fresh and timeless, they’re good designs that would stand alone even if not on the web.