A real "we've got a nephew" of graphic design and illustration, mental illness held at bay by a very nice vegetable garden and cats.
Lapsed printmaker, you should ask me about it and I'll be very weird
so, why 88x31? those dimensions specifically? my guess would be there was some kind of constraint, or that it fit in a certain kind of space. i was there for the first wave of these and i made one at one point (in like 2000, lol) and i didn't even know then.
to prove i'm geniuine
My guess is that there was some well-known button/image that happened to be 88x31 and everyone copied that format.
That’s somewhat supported by the theories advanced here: http://88x31.nl/history.html
ooh thank you for the resource! it definitely seems to be something like that
this history is satisfyingly organic! i love the idea that it lost a vertical pixel because of, either, the knockoff became the norm because of aggressive gatekeeping, or someone made an oopsie early enough in the lineage that it hasn't been questioned really
