MySpace is the new DTP. More than 100 million users, each with their own page – each designing their own page. The desktop PC, digital fonts and basic layout software famously turned every headteacher and every accountant with a 40th birthday party to organise into Alexey Brodovitch: MySpace is the same, but with flashing, twinkling, scrolling knobs on.

A journey into MySpace is not for the aesthetically fainthearted. Thanks to a somewhat clunky layout system, a very limited selection of typefaces and the combined design sensibilities of millions of overexcited teenagers, this is not a quiet place to be. The general principle appears to be why use one image when 50 will do. If it can be made to bounce up and down, it shall be made to do so.

And just in case you lack the wit or patience to design your own page, a whole industry has grown up of those who are only too happy to pimp (©MTV) your MySpace for you. Take build-myspace.com. It offers over 10,000 free layouts and 15,000 assorted graphic elements to add to your page. If you need help, you can even have an operator talk you through the process step-by-step.

Those of you of a sensitive disposition should probably avoid pimpmyspace.org Among the treasures to be discovered here include

Glitter Graphics and (typographers look away now) Glitter Text

These are design elements, sold off the peg to cut and paste at will. You just take their code and slap it into your page. Fancy a rockin’ emoticon? Here you go:

I guess we should be grateful that so many people – so many young people – are enjoying design, no matter how horrific the results may be. But, remarkably, the MySpace aesthetic extends to those who really should know better. Take Dazed and Confused magazine for instance. Style leader, effortlessly cool in all it does, and yet its MySpace page looks like it was done by a 14 year-old. The text is badly spaced and mis-aligned. A tiled background image of covers clashes horribly with the standard MySpace elements sitting on top.

What is it about MySpace that causes the previously well-designed to abandon good taste in such a reckless fashion? It’s about fitting in. Dazed and Confused, i-D and the hundreds of brands and other commercial entities (listed here) that have eagerly set up camp know that you can’t go to cool school wearing a three-piece suit – not unless you want to get laughed out of the playground.

The look is, if anything, un-designed and home-made, just as it is in those other informal media spaces, YouTube and Flickr. Like chameleons, brands are taking on the outward appearance of those around them. As the Now In Colour blog put it “In the world of MySpace, Sony is a single Sagittarian that doesn’t want kids, Nike is 6’2” and doesn’t like sluts and Google is a middle-aged woman who has met Fabio.”

It doesn’t always work – at times it’s downright, dad-at-a-disco embarrassing – but it feels appropriate as MySpace develops a visual language all its own.

And we’re there too. You can find Creative Review’s MySpace page here. Our art director didn’t lay it out – it was put together by Gavin, our staff writer. Why? Because, in this environment, it just felt right. Plus Gav knew how to do it. I think it needs more Glitter Text though.