POV: How creatively nutritious is your internet feed?

The way in which society interacts with “the web” has reached a point of overconsumption. We each have our seemingly “recommended” feeds to scroll through, but these platters of content are pushed upon us with previous habits in mind. As a result, it’s interesting to question how much nutritional value your feed may be providing you with, in a creative sense. Especially as, chances are, you’re gorging on the same meal as everybody else.

However, a new platform for celebrating innovative, personal web-based experiences has been developed with the hope of changing such behaviour: Tiny Awards. An awarding body that exists to “celebrate the personal internet”, Tiny Awards favours “the other web”. This alternative internet, according to the founders of the Tiny Awards, “is small and handmade, and isn’t trying to sell you anything or monetise anything but which instead is about people using the digital tools we all have access to to make the sorts of small, personal experiences that you tend not to see in ‘the feed’.”

The individuals behind it, Kristoffer Tjalve and Matt Muir, are deep divers of the internet. Kristoffer, for instance, writes the Naive Weekly, “a Sunday email with links to the quiet, odd and poetic web”. While Matt (who is quick to point out Tiny Awards “was Kris’ idea, he just asked me to help a bit”) is behind Web Curios, a weekly round-up of digital arts the author simply “found interesting online over the past seven days, and thinks worth sharing with its small readership.”

To win a Tiny Award, a web experience must be URL-based, not be intended for commercial ends, not feature apps or downloads, or be made by an agency or brand. The winner of its inaugural award in 2023 was Lauren Walker’s site, Rotating Sandwiches – in which filled baguettes, burgers, ice cream sandwiches, bagels, toasties and hot dogs rotate on an infinite scroll.

Behind the scenes, the Tiny Awards was born from a desire of Kristoffer’s to develop an award favouring independent website makers and to act, in part, “as an antidote to commercialised/brand-heavy initiatives”. In fact, it’s tricky to think of an awarding body that favours the uncommercialised – especially when it comes to digital experiences. Adopting new technologies is often a “creative act” deemed as innovative once a brand, or edging-towards-household-name-status agency, has done so. Largely because doing so gives competitors the confidence to follow suit. But in reality a creative “web” is a tapestry that only exists thanks to those who sew its initial threads. In Kristoffer’s view: “To keep the web alive, we need all the tiny, personal and silly websites. They are the foundation of the internet.”

As a result, the Tiny Awards doesn’t merit “reach”, KPIs, accurate targeting of audience personas, or even consider the word “cadence”. Instead, it’s built purely to honour what many of us loved about the internet in its early years. Put simply, it presents a collection of websites “articulating what we like on the internet,” says Kristoffer. In fact, the name Tiny Awards honours the “Tiny Internet” – a call for a new human-centred internet, cultivating community as opposed to the current isolation web experiences facilitate – created by Spencer Chang. Spencer, too, is an example of a creative Kristoffer hopes to support with the awards: “a kind, skilled and curious technologist who could easily be working for a VC-funded startup, but instead is pursuing an independent path”. And, as Matt points out, the other contender for the name, “Not The Fucking Webbys”, felt “a touch on the aggressive side”.

Scrolling through the shortlisted entries for this year’s Tiny Awards feels like true discovery. As Matt points out, there are of course a long list of individuals carving out spaces online, “it’s just they tend to be buried under floods of algosorted photos and videos, or large-scale commercial web design done by big shops.” The cost of larger awards also excludes the majority of independent creatives, making arguably the most interesting work.

At times, it can feel as if these gigantic awards have also grown too large for their own good. This year’s press release listing D&AD’s total winners extended to 652 “pencils” awarded, raising the question of such a ubiquitous award’s value. Tiny Awards isn’t purely built as an antidote to such initiatives, but instead driven by a belief that it can only be beneficial “to remind people that you can make things for other reasons than being paid, especially on the internet, where so much of our behaviour is transactional,” says Kristoffer. And those “larger shops” have plentiful awards to apply to. “But they are welcome to sponsor us,” Kristoffer adds. “This would even be a fair way to pay back to the internet understory that provides them ideas to repackage, polish and sell to clients.”

Being able to operate freely from industry also allows for maximum variety in those shortlisted for the Tiny Awards, both in technical ability and the idea behind the site itself. As a result, the projects highlighted don’t present any common trends. Instead, each of the shortlisted sites demonstrates a singular identity. “Every site is unique, and personal, and while they vary hugely – in tone and topic and substance and expression – they are all someone’s,” says Matt. That being said, Kristoffer highlights a growing interest in Neocities in the submission list: “I don’t think this is only caused by digital nostalgia,” he highlights. “I think many people are genuinely tired of feeds, notifications and infinite scroll, and are using the weariness to rebuild their digital homes in places where they get to define their own terms and aesthetic.” Neocities – a free static website host turned social network, founded to regain perceived lost values and culture of the internet of yesteryear – appear to be a corner of the internet “people trust with their presence,” continues Kristoffer. “Another, is Are.na.”

Additionally, this year saw entries using generative AI to harness a creator’s idea. Within Tiny Awards’ FAQs for entries, its founders are quick to underscore the moral quandary of working with AI tools in a creative setting. “Look, this is complicated,” it states, but ultimately: “it’s true that there are significant ways in which generative AI can be used to help people make and build things online which they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do – which feels like a good thing!” In turn, the opportunity such tools afford has given Matt in particular a sense of hope for a wonderful, weird web to return. “One of the few things that makes me sort of happy about the advent of generative AI is the potential it affords people like me – who, to be clear, can’t code or design for shit – to be able to explore creative web design thanks to AI-generated code,” he says. “So, I suppose what I would like to see more of is people experimenting, playing with ways of expressing their interests in ways that feel right and appropriate for them, rather than ways mandated by design tradition or platform-constrained feature sets.”

The decision of who wins the two Tiny Awards available – one main Tiny Award, but also a secondary multiplayer award – is decided by the public, and there is still time to vote! There are 17 shortlisted links in this year’s awards, which, Kristoffer points out, would only take you a minute and a half to look over if you offer five seconds to each. “Then, spend more time with the one you like the most,” he advises, “search for the creator’s name, see if you can find their website, check out their other work, and if you enjoy that too, search for their email address and send them a tiny word of appreciation.”

Final winners will then be announced a few short days after, on 26 August. And while that will spell the end of this year’s Tiny Awards, it’s really just the beginning, adds Kristoffer: “I remain confident that the best websites are yet to come.”