The Amish don’t make good web designers

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t rule it entirely out, but chances are…

Anyway, this week I got to thinking, you know those moments where you just know you’re pushing things in the wrong direction? Like trying to back a car into a tent, or, I guess, pushing a cart up a hill? Sure, it might work, but chances are… Let me be the one blogger who isn’t going to talk about the iPhone or mini-feeds or Quicktime updates this week. No. I’m going to talk about something much more rudimentary and much more important to designers: inspiration (and not forcing the square peg in the round hole)

Sometimes, the absurd is the best channel for inspiration and when the peg doesn’t fit, most people will first try using force. When that fails, they will just give up. The hacker, on the other hand, will whittle the peg down so it is nice a round and will slide right in. The web developer needs to do better. The developer needs to assess the situation and understand that holes and pegs all need to work together and then come up with a set of standards.

After a week of “crap my programs don’t run after installing the Quicktime updates” (crummy, I already broke one of my promises), I thought I’d take a step back and remind everyone why they got into this industry in the first place. It’s not about computers. No really, it’s not. It’s not about designing the next big networking disaster, although at times I really need to remind myself of this. No. It’s about social change.

If you don’t agree with me, well you probably shouldn’t be working in web design. The internet is, more than anything else, a vehicle by which to affect change. Be it accessible information, nearly instant communications or even rating your local burrito stand (which by the way, is quite terrible), the internet is this. As a web designer, you shoulder a great responsibility.

The trend is growing to be ever more apparent. When 3 of the 4 applications you’re working on have pretty notable overlap and the 4th is a just a mashup of the other 3, you have to stop and wonder, are we not just backing cars into tents? The overall trend in development is barreling towards frameworks and libraries and the notion of a “freelance designer” is increasingly becoming a misnomer. As the web itself is bringing the world closer together, so too is it bringing web designers closer together. Hence, the Amish don’t make good web developers.

In 2000, there were 198,000 in the US. Of those, exactly 0 were listed as working in the field of web design. Surprising? Not in the slightest, I guess. But sometimes it just feels like there may be more out there than they would have you believe.

I’m at the edge of my seat, awaiting this weekend for WordCamp 2007. With the ever growing number of bloggers taking to the web everyday adding their 2 cents, we can expect a mighty large purse, right?

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!