Very well then . . . . I contradict myself

I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.

No, I'm not Walt Whitman, but I am large, contradicting, and multitudinous. I wanted to take a moment to wonder about contradictions. Why are we so afraid of them? Why are they worse than wet-bed dreams for striking fear into our changeling hearts?

Every political cycle, each candidate berates the other for changing his/her (that's the only time I'm doing that, sorry ladies) mind. We claim a manufacturer has lost us when a product is "improved" in slightly nefarious ways, or when the packaging changes colors. As children we grow up quick to accuse our parents of vicious lies like deciding not to get ice cream, putting back the Transformer, or steadfastly denying our God-given right to own a pony. We hide all of these battles under the guise of trust, a five-letter word that has four-letter consequences.

I'm not really all that interested in the political campaign (at least not regarding this aspect this anyway). My main beef is with the University of ************. I was asked by a department head to consider helping them redesign their website. I jumped at the chance, being a fledgling though competent web designer. My head started swimming with CSS and neat nibbles of JavaScript that I could use to improve the appearance (and therefore reception) of their site. But before me, towering like the Greek god who was left out of the holiday sacrifice, was the dreaded TEMPLATE. All bow before TEMPLATE.

Here's the thing about templates: They only work in certain environments. If you want to put a standard face on a company website that sells, I don't know, one or two products, by all means go right ahead. If you think that users will remain more comfortable navigating your site if you dictate where the links and buttons go, I can mostly agree. But when you give me a templated space that's only 200px wide, I can't do much but yawn. There's never going to be excitement in that small area surrounded by bland web 2.0 curves and white space. It's going to fall flat on its face. Even Blogger allows more design options for Christ's sake.

But the real issue here is the fear of contradiction. The webmaster at U of ** seems to feel that the users will get lost in the .edu site if the standardized wrapper isn't prominent on every page. Do people really get lost in websites? Do they surf the web for hours only to find themselves with no idea where they are? My question is a much simpler one: If a prospective student can't navigate a website, how to you expect him to navigate Freshman year?

The U of ** wants a consistent image. I can give them that. I have no problem with sticking to color palettes and typefaces, maintaining the aesthetic integrity of the site. But when my end of the design is determining where the University approved and uploaded pictures will go between lines of black text on a white background, I get understandably frustrated. And who says a consistent image is always a good thing? Look what it did for Enron. But seriously, if you only sell one thing, one image is fine. One product: one identity. But when you market educational tools in a respectable range of disciplines, I think slightly straying from corporate boredom (and I do mean slightly; I'm not talking about disco balls on a Care Bear background) might even be a good thing.

Let us contradict ourselves. Let's change our minds about where we want to go and who with and what it will look like when we get there. I know there are bigger problems in the world than template website design, but it might even be a sign of something more important. In a world where we care more about what the business looks like than what the business does, excitement is all part of the game. And let's face it, if you can't be good, be loud.