12 Sep 4705 - Who Advances Design

A simple question and a simple descriptor.

But there is no easy answer laying in wait. The problem is one of existential crisis.
Albeit, I admit, a watered-down version of one. What is it I am supposed to be doing, exactly, while I am at work? For now I'm only considering the parts of my job deeply tied to web design. This in fact is only a small part of what I do, but as it covers the nature of things I do, and because it is a sticky point, and because I don't have the answer to it, it rates an essay-like discussion.

To describe the problem of what to do with design, I have to know what design is. I can give a theoretical thing properties and describe it without knowing if it does or does not exist, and in this case, the fundamental guess is that design does exist. It need not for my points to be valid here. Design is the method of moving meaning through an electronic medium. It can be good or bad. Good design has a one-to-one relationship between actual content and conveyed content. Poor design has a low ratio of what is presented to what is understood. No design will ever convey all of the contained meaning. No design will ever convey only what is intended. We're talking of margins of good and poor.
Given margins of good and poor design, we also have the means to impliment said design, and here is where my sticky point lies.
No one is trying to throw away the English language simply because they've found a more efficient one. It doesn't go through official upgrades. Do not expect to see English 2.0 formalized and published any time soon. My henchmen are hard at work right now creating it maybe, but until they do, don't hold your breath. English does grow and evolve, but only by tiny bits, and only truly in the colloquial sense: we change which parts we choose to say, we do not outright get rid of old words.
So why throw away the code that we have? Or moreover, why throw away the tools that we use to make and impliment that code? Do they no longer work? Do they grow old? Can anything that is a language actually age so much as to be unusable?
Maybe. There's certainly something preferable between the old and the new with respect to code. Should I even really bring code into the mix yet? I'm still talking about design and language, so code is the next step. Code is also language. It is a method of arranging content to convey meaning. The same way you arrange sounds when speaking, a browser arranges content according to code. In both cases, it is the users who decide how to best use the language, and not anyone else.
It sounds simple to say when put that way. You may have acquiesced. I'm not sure you should have. That the ones who speak are the ones who change language for everyone is not up for question here. I am taking that as a certainty. What I don't have is a complete analog for code, because unlike English, web code of all sorts has regulatory organizations both public and commercial that get their own say in what happens between where the coding tools get to the coder.

At this point I would like to remind everyone that the ultimate goal here is the end user. The idea is to get ideas from the screen to the brains of the people reading it. Spiritually speaking, I am the coder trying to graft my spirit onto yours. But ah, the players in question.
First we have the coding language developers. These have been lost to the great internet. I'm sure they live in some cave or castle somewhere, but by and by I am too far removed from these people to know their names or how they work. Next we have the software developers for the graphical front ends of things. If it were up to me, I wouldn't even include them in the chain, but for the sake of the abstract sense, I can't put code into files without come kind of thing that interfaces with me. In the specific sense, I mean the large companies who put out proprietary tools for designing. Dreamweaver, Frontpage, GoLive (soon to become dreamweaver), and so on. The people who develop the software for design. Next we have the coders. This is an middle-to-end user. I am sitting in that step now. I am going to be speaking from this perspective, although for the purposes of the argument, I'm not going to consider myself the forefront of this. In all cases, consider people so far named as being experts in their respective places.
The last is the end user who browses the sites in question and absorbs meaning. For this discussion, I'm mostly leaving this person out, even though they are the most important step as I have defined design. I'm not ignoring the end user.
For right now, I'm taking design a step back, and talking about the end user who uses design software to create content.

And this is where I am finally ready to approach the question I posed in the title. Who Advances Design? Whether or not design needs to advance, either by leaps or by margins, it will. But how does it happen? Who takes design in the abstract, and changes the formless?
The software companies would have you believe that it is them. Every time Adobe publishes a new version of their software, they are telling you that your other tools are obsolete. They are by extension telling you that you are obsolete. This is vulgar, even if correct.
I pose that it is not correct. Software developers do not change design. They sure want to think that they do, and for every new tool that makes a wysiwyg to craft your style sheets for you, they try to carve out a little more for themselves of the pie that is those who advance design.
It is always the users of the tools, the artisans, who advance their craft. Imagine if instead we were talking about stone sculpture. To say that software designers push design forward is to say that makers of stone chisels and hammers push art forward. To say this is correct on a certain level: without any chisel at all, there would be no stone sculpting. This does not make chiselmakers into artisans.
People identify with the artists and the designers. Artists push art forward, and so designers push design forward.

It is pretty simple to comprehend at that point. I'm not making any lofty claim or platitude about design, I'm simply putting it in terms relevant to understand what something as abstract as design is and how it should evolve.
So the next time someone tells me I have to learn the new software simply because it is the new software, I may naturally react in a highly negative way. Such as punching this person in the face. Seriously. Don't come to me with the idea that I'm going to be complicit about anything, because Kaz is not complicit. Kaz argues, and he has a nasty habit of thinking about every tool he uses, and every thing that he does.
To do any less would violate the evilist creedo, for one. And incidentally I highly recommend said creedo.

Also since Kaz thinks so much, you should give him a break and think about him every now and again.

This tirade coded in Notepad++.

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