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Why I Do Web Design

Often I’ve been asked, in the fifth hour of a project to improve some small thing on my GLOT, why I bother. Why not bother to actually update it, rather than improve something no one will notice anyways? Well, dammit, I notice. I notice that the Rubix cube doesn’t display correctly in Internet Explorer 6. I notice things that don’t match well, like the alignment of the contact form and me-photos. I know that the search was placed incorrectly and used borrowed CSS since I put the damn thing in. And so today, I fixed it. I fixed all of those things. Yet do I find satisfaction?

No. And here’s why: the web isn’t real. It’s not a tangible experience. Up until the moment someone pointed their browser at this particular website and saw this particular thing, it was just an idea. It was information, data stored in a machine of irrelevant location, and will go back to being there once that someone leaves. The data might be slightly different. It might be very different. But it’s still just data, and it doesn’t have a life of it’s own, it doesn’t DO anything that isn’t in its basic nature. It’s not even a thing, it’s an it.

Existential pontificating of digital existence complete. Back to the original question: why do it? Because it’s a challenge. Because it’s one I can usually accomplish, given enough time and tenacity. Because it fits my habits, sitting in front of a computer. Because it’s something I’m good at. Because it makes me feel like I did something. Because I can. And so there you have it: I do it because I can. Sometimes it seems like a pointless exercise. Often it is. But here you are, and for the moment, it’s real. Hm.

5 replies on “Why I Do Web Design”

Well put – as usual. The middle paragraph is the best definition of the internet I’ve ever seen, of course I don’t go looking for definitions…

Dude, that Rubix cube has NEVER worked in IE, and I TOLD you that back when I used IE…and at the time you said, “Who cares, because IE sucks.”

And now I don’t use IE more. And now you fixed the thing so it works in IE.

Huh.

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