I recently wrote a post calling for you, my dear friends, to suggest what we might consider a “canonic” or “iconic” web design—something with the aesthetic resonance, recognizability, and influence of, say, Paul Rand’s IBM logo or Massimo Vignelli’s New York City subway map. This was in response to a post by Armin Vit about why there are no “landmark” web designs. My guidelines were simple: Just suggest a damn site and don’t try to explain why the question can’t be answered, as the commenters on Armin’s original post had already hammered that to death.

Well, kudos to those of you who tried, but we didn’t get (and I didn’t offer) much in the way of suggestions. I thought I’d follow that post up, though, as The Legend of Zeldman himself—web designer and critic Jeffrey Zeldman, that is—has chimed in with the best response yet as to why the question is misguided, if not unanswerable. I totally agree with him, except for the parts where I totally disagree.

Here’s a part where we are definitely seeing eye-to-eye:

Each year, advertising and design magazines and professional organizations hold contests for “new media design” judged by the winners of last year’s competitions. [...]

Although there are exceptions, for the most part the creators of winning entries see the web as a vehicle for advertising and marketing campaigns in which the user passively experiences Flash and video content. For the active user, there is gaming—but what you and I think of as active web use is limited to clicking a “Digg this page” button.

The winning sites look fabulous as screen shots in glossy design annuals. When the winners become judges, they reward work like their own. Thus sites that behave like TV and look good between covers continue to be created, and a generation of clients and art directors thinks that stuff is the cream of web design.

Yes, and that sucks. Totally with you there, Z-man. I found that when I needed a quick surge of envy and inspiration while doing print design, it made perfect sense to grab a design magazine and flip through the various printed goods showcased therein. But when I needed to design a website, that would not do. Most of us aren’t designing Flash monstrosities even for the most indulgent personal vanity projects.

Zeldman goes on to explain that web design is more like typeface design than, say, poster design, which is why the comparison is inaccurate. This is because web design is not about obsessing over why fonts suck and how we lack “absolute control over every atom of the visual experience,” but rather is about providing “an environment for someone else’s expression.” I’m completely fascinated by this argument, and I see a lot of sense in it. Here, check it out yourself:

Great web designs are like great typefaces: some, like Rosewood, impose a personality on whatever content is applied to them. Others, like Helvetica, fade into the background (or try to), magically supporting whatever tone the content provides. [...]

Which web design is like that? For one, Douglas Bowman’s white “Minima” layout for Blogger, used by literally millions of writers—and it feels like it was designed for each of them individually. That is great design.

That is such a clever point. And incidentally, “Minima” (in slightly altered form) is the template behind Doombot’s design.

So yes, websites aren’t posters. We use them differently. There are plenty of great sites that are great for reasons that don’t make sense to the artsy crowd. Makes a lot of sense. I agree with this to a great extent, and if you just want this debate to finally be over, and for me to stop badgering you about this, then you should just stop reading because, hey, Zeldman makes an excellent point.

But…

Zeldman is completely dodging the question again, and it was not an unfair or unanswerable question.

Jeffrey Zeldman has one idea of what makes a great site, and that’s a perfectly valid and good perspective. The problem is that he—and everyone else who gets bent out of shape by the suggestion that web sites could be works of art in their own right—seems to think that this is the only good perspective.

Now, stay with me here, but I’m going to hit you with an admittedly imperfect analogy (but aren’t they all?).

In Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud relates the tale of how Will Eisner met Rube Goldberg at a cartoonists’ convention. McCloud notes:

Somehow, their conversation turned to Will’s views on comics’ potential as an art form.

Once he’d heard enough, Goldberg banged his cane on the floor and said: “That’s bullshit, kid! We’re not artists!

“We’re vaudevillians! And don’t you ever forget that!!“

Eisner, of course, turned out to be exceptionally influential among comic book creators, and a source of inspiration for creators who shared the belief that comics could have some artistic potential beyond their value as cheap entertainment.

It’s an imperfect analogy, as I admitted already. “Art vs. vaudeville” is not quite the same comparison as “artsy vs. functional” (or whatever). My point is just that Jeffrey Zeldman is stamping his cane on the floor and insisting that web designs can’t be that thing you say they could be, and that seems pretty reductive to me.

Zeldman argues that web designs are environments made for the content of other people, but not every web design is made for somebody else. We could do whatever the hell we want with the Doombot design, crazy it up something fierce. We don’t do that because we are lazy. But there’s no reason we couldn’t decide to try to make this a masterpiece of visual design, and the same goes for anybody else running a personal site.

And you know what else? Web typography does suck, and the guys who had the stones to say as much (and suggest how to remedy this) at South by Southwest gave one of the most highly appreciated talks I saw or even heard of all weekend. Seriously, it would be easier to make truly striking and lasting web designs if such aesthetic considerations were a priority built into the underlying architecture of the medium itself. Right now, it is a bitch and a half if you want to create a site that is attractive and fully searchable.

Zeldman is kind of being unfair to print design here. It’s not all Bob Dylan posters. Massimo Vignelli’s famous NYC subway map was a frigging map. It had functional considerations and hosted other people’s content. And it was still a gorgeous design.

But you know what? I think you can argue even within Zeldman’s paradigm for web design that there is room for truly landmark design. Let me recall for you how he defines web design:

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

I do not think that is a good definition of web design. I think that is an excellent definition for graphical user interface design. And, actually, when you think about it, the way Zeldman is arguing that sites should be designed is basically that they should work well as a functional GUI that you could use on a regular basis. Every website, under this paradigm, is its own little GUI.

Well, guess what? We have seen a beautiful, influential, genuinely canonical design in this medium, and it is the original Mac operating system interface. It convinced the world that computers would forever be digital environments rather than just digital machines, and the impact of its aesthetic choices has been far-reaching. And, primitive though some of those gray screens may seem in retrospect, it still had a cartoonishness to it that not only remains charming to look at today, but continues to feel present in contemporary iterations of Mac OS. And it was (and still is) very functional, navigable, and usable overall. I’ll defend all that later if I must, but I think that this is an answer that will please most design snobs.

So, there: I’ve answered Armin’s question, but not for the medium he asked for. I answered it for the medium Jeffrey Zeldman argued that Armin Vit was asking for. Therefore, the question remains: Why are there no iconic websites when there is the potential for a canon of GUI design?

No more “it can’t be done” crap. No. The answer why there are no such web designs is that web designers aren’t making them.

There are some technical barriers, but I think these follow from philosophical or ideological roadblocks. One technical barrier is that the infrastructure for typography isn’t there in the same way that it’s there for an operating system GUI. The Mac could offer “the first computer with beautiful typography” because all the fonts were built into it. I get the sense, though, that figuring out a way to make a web with beautiful typography is not really a priority for the people building our sites and the vehicles we use to traverse them. Hell, Zeldman seems to dismiss it out of hand because that’s not the point, as far as he’s concerned.

In summary, we have no landmark websites because the people who fancy themselves artsy are mostly working in other media, the people who fancy themselves “new media designers” for the web are making horrendous crap in Flash, and the people who fancy themselves real web designers don’t believe their medium can be artsy, so they don’t bother trying. And that, my friends, is a damn shame.