Swam Studio is the editorial design practice of Shelby Wilson and Alex Miller. They bring an experimental, code-first approach to design, helping to tell stories using the native elements of the web.
Century-Scale Storage
2024
lil.law.harvard.edu/century-scale-storage
In his essay Century-Scale Storage, author and friend Maxwell Neely-Cohen investigates the technical and social challenges of long term digital storage, attempting to answer the question, “if you had to store something for 100 years, how would you do it?”
To accompany the themes of the essay, we created interstitial animations that play with motifs of digital decay, digital storage mediums, and archived artifacts. In addition to developing original animations, we also sourced archival images interspersed throughout the text.
Published by the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School.
The HTML Review
2022 —
The HTML Review is an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web. The design of each issue purposely eschews technical bloat in favor of simple but elegant web fundamentals.
The HTML Review has been featured by Frieze Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Longreads, and the German radio program Netzkultur. There have been public performances and displays of work they have published at CultureHub, Rhizome, the de Young Museum, and The Net Gala.
Grid World
2023
This personal essay connects the simple, humble grid to a larger story about how we design and organize our environments, tools, and lives.
The accompanying design and graphics riff on the visual grid theme with low-res graphics that contrast rigid grid constraints with off-grid bouncy and flowy motion.
Conway's Game of Hope
2023
alex.miller.garden/game-of-hope
In 1970, the mathematician John Conway conceived of a simulation called the Game of Life, which inspired a generation of mathematicians and computer scientists with its emergent behavior. This piece of fiction explores the inherent hope contained within Conway’s game.
The web-based interactive elements become part of the story in this piece, allowing readers to Game of Life solve puzzles, and view large scale simulations that hint at the emergent power of simulation.