Its really hard to make a great ascetically pleasing web site, which is probably why this one is so dull, mostly because of your monitor. You might think its rude of me to blame your monitor, perhaps it is. Or is it? Actually it looks really good on my 1080p wide screen monitor with its thousands of shades of black. It even looks really good on my wife’s cool little Mac Book. But it really sucks on the screens at work.

What I’m getting at here is not really how the monitor makes it look but the challenge that we as designers face in conveying our creations to the outside world through this uncooperative medium of the web. Today we constantly fight with:

• Browser reproduction – is the box model in IE really broken, if so which one in which version of IE? Is Safari the benchmark or Opera? What about Firefox and Chrome, surely they could get it right?
• Display characteristics – how do you know what black really looks like on my screen, or someone else’s? Will your carefully shaded images show the lovely gradients of a baby’s skin or will it be uglified by the course grades available? Are the dimensions just right? How about the resolution?
• Plugin availability – all my browsers have flash block on them to stop Internet bandwidth thieves stealing what I’ve paid for with their extravagant advertising. Are all the fonts that you need there? JavaScript anyone? Will that DHTML find everything that it needs?

Of course there are lots more things that can seemingly go astray that aren’t mentioned here, so how do we solve it? Some hail standards as the way to go. Perhaps they are right, I certainly like standards. But the problem with standards is that they need to cater for every situation; and they need to be created, grow and die gracefully.  Very hard to do well.  Other’s take the minimalist approach claiming that it’s easier to be consistent accross diverse transmission and presentation media by making it all to simple to stuff up.  But as a friend has a habit of saying this is proved wrong by the all too true adage ‘when one makes a thing idiot proof, one will only find a deeper class of idiot’.  It is so easy to disprove the idea that a central control system or monopoly can render things perfect through ultimate control with one word: Microsoft.

Ultimately there’s one thing that we can’t protect ourselves from, idiots who think that this problem can be universally solved.  The problem is not that the situation need be solved but that we need to recognise that it doesn’t need to be solved. You really only want to talk to those of a similar mind or a specific group so just design for them.  People who want to talk to the world fail because the world quite frankly isn’t interested and isn’t listening.  So don’t solve that problem.

Solve the problem of communicating with your target market.  Our only concern should be with our target audience and communication with them.  Smaller number of people means a smaller number of problems and perhaps we can manage that.  So take this web site, its target market is me.  I blog mostly to see my thoughts on the screen because it helps me think about them.  Some times it helps me understand the rubbish that I think.  Other times it helps me develop some really neat ideas and concepts.  If other people read it that’s fine, I might even refer people to it to understand something that I don’t have time to explain but that I’ve written about.  But at the end of the day its just a place for my thoughts and ramblings.  Do the same with your market, are they old people with simple set ups they bought from Wall Mart?  Are they techno-junkies how are likely to have the latest in colour reproducing screens?  Will they actually consume your content how you want them too?

At this point I need to wrap up with a tie to the opening about aesthetics and the variances that make it hard with one last and the most significant point, the people factor.  Every now and then someone says to me, ‘it shouldn’t be black with white ’cause its hard to read’ or ‘if you don’t make it colourful it won’t be a site that people like to spend time on’ or my favourite ‘I’m an artist / designer / architect and I know what looks good and that doesn’t’.  But even the so called professionals are really just espousing their own opinions and preferences unless they can come up with concrete reasons that demonstrates that your target market will be affected by what they have observed.  So take the hints from above and comments of others into consideration when designing your site, but most importantly survey your target market to make sure your web site works for your audience.

All good points, however there is a point that needs to be understood; I’m sad if you don’t like my web site but that’s OK because it works for my audience, me.  Hopefully everybody else has just as much success designing for their audience too.

Best of luck to all of you, M.C.