As my work with third party web designers has expanded over the past few months (prior to now, I did the design work — along with the development — whereas now I’m primarily working to implement other people’s designs into a content management system), I’ve started seeing more and more one of the primary downfalls of the web as a medium to date. More and more, I’m coming to realize that designers (by and large) are either trained and trapped completely in a static medium (print, by and large) or — hopefully not the case — utterly incapable of thinking in dynamic terms.

I’m referring a little bit to the fact that people still under-utilize the Web and its potential. The medium is over a decade into its current incarnation, and there have been tremendous leaps forward in the days since the first text-only browsers. There are technologies like YouTube, RSS, and e-commerce, but by and large, the Internet is a conglomeration of media — more like an all-in-one entertainment center with audio, video, text and images. There are those that have stepped forward with tools like Flash to create new and more immersive ideas, but even they have largely used such tools to show off their visual design ideas.

Worse, though, are those that are still designing site presentations and layouts as though they are working with print. Ignoring standards and best practices (sadly, there are apparently more designers employed that are blissfully unaware of Web S&P than not — a subject I’ll expound on in the near future), a far-too-large number of people responsible for designing websites are ignorant of the medium for which they are designing.

The beauty of the web, at its heart, is that it is a living medium, capable (inherently so) of change and growth. This is true both on a greater scale as an organism, and in its experiential qualities. It differs from any widespread popular medium with the possible exception of television in that the format by which users access it is completely non-static.

A magazine is going to be the same size, printed on the same paper stock with the same inks, with the same layout, no matter who is reading it. Readers lack the option of turning off or overriding style sheets, disabling images and scripts, or downloading additional plugins or controls that offer additional behaviors. Instead of a predecided paper, users have monitors that may range from PDAs and cellphones to small monitors with outdated resolutions to the latest widescreen flat panel tech. Internet users can adjust text-size or window measurements on the fly. Complicate all of this with the selection of browsers in play, and perhaps you can start to see why those of us that work with CSS can be heard muttering and cursing from our offices all day long.

I’ve heard it said that working within these contexts is too constraining; designers as a lot are a vain bunch, and demand to work on the bleeding edge. Putting aside the fact that very few of the designs that I’ve seen come out of these people are very good, much less cutting edge, I have one thing that I think all these people need to hear: you need to find a different career, if you can’t be bothered to work within the context of what is required of you.

Yes, there’s plenty of room on the Internet for experimentation and pushing the envelope. This site, for instance: it’s designed and developed on my 23″ monitor, using Firefox on Windows. There are pieces of it that break in other browsers, and I don’t really care. On the flip side, this site’s primary audience: me. I know what tech I’m using, and I know how it will look. In my professional life, this approach is unthinkable, because the audience is much larger — and unpredictable. The same goes for a lot of designers: the ones I’m thinking of work in higher education and e-commerce, and those audiences must be approached as lowest-common denominators, like it or not.

There’s plenty of room on the Web for mad scientists and even the egos of graphic artists. There is untapped potential galore. The people that want to walk the bleeding edge, though, need to learn that experimentation in the proper context is possible genius, while ignoring the boundaries of the job for the sake of exciting work or showing off is, in the end, terrible design and unprofessional work that reflects badly on every one of us.

Currently listening to Scarsick by Pain of Salvation