Meaning - to use one of your examples - its nice for those building skyscrapers to know that a steel beem will support the same weight whether its purchased from one place or another. those are the controls, those are the standards. now once said steel is brought to the site and the contruction begins its up to the architect to create a conventional building or something more creative. same steel, same bolts, same way of connecting one piece to another, but the over all structure or fasade can be wildy different and unique.

What I think about is examples of successful companies in the offline world. Jetblue comes to mind. Why is Jetblue successful? Have they innovated everything about the flying experience? No, there are still six seats in every row. If you take the 10,000 foot view (pun not intended), Jetblue looks just about like every other airline.

What makes Jetblue stand out to me is what I guess I’d call “innovation at the edges.” They have six seats in every row like every other airline, but they tweak the standard model by offering more legroom in the back of the plane, balancing demand. They put TVs in every seat rather than having a few projector monitors scattered throughout. They take what’s standard and make it better.

Most standards are there for a reason and it makes good sense to follow them, no matter you’re industry. Innovation comes when we make tweaks at the edges or come up with a new way to combine standards.

I’m no business guru and I’m not sure if my point is 100% clear, but I believe if you think creatively, standards and innovation are not mutually exclusive.

I am a firm believer in the benefits of standards. However, it’s going to be very difficult to create something groundbreaking if you limit yourself to what the standards and best practices currently are.

This is such a great thing to bring up as standards seem to dominate how contempory sites are being made. This obviously is a very good thing many times, but we also have to accept the fact that it limits new and exciting things hitting the web.

Awesome post.

@Jim - Thanks for the great example. It looks like even small changes can disrupt an industry.

There are plenty of people pushing the envelope and doing incredible and innovative things, while using best practices and standards — just look at the stars of the web design world for example. Valid, semantic markup and CSS combined with fantastic visual design and functionality.

In my experience, the people who don’t bother with standards and best practices are also the least innovative and most mediocre, or “average”.

The problem is that when using eg styling for opacity or CSS3 selectors that it wont validate in the WWW validator. Or eg -moz rounded corners styling, the same thing. They are wonderful and inovative but are web standards in the present time. So would you use them anyhow even when it will not validate like eg Element {outline: none }to get rid of the *dashed* borders when focusing a linked element?

Some standardistas would argue that it shouldn’t be used if it isn’t standards compliant but if innovation adds to a design or increases usability then surely this is more important. After all, standards should be about empowering the user not someone nagging on about validators.

You could go ahead and develop a new markuplanguage that was way better than html, but it wouldn’t matter since no-one would have a browser that could interpret it unless you made one.

I’m not quite sure what points you’re trying to make here.

Never underestimate an innovative technology’s power to create change.

The problem is that when using eg styling for opacity or CSS3 selectors that it wont validate in the WWW validator. So would you use them anyhow?

I think I would have to judge this on a case by case basis. There is no rule of thumb here. I used opacity in the footer text at the very bottom of fadtastic’s pages and also the hover selector on the div surrounding it. Result? In most browsers it works great and in others the effect simply can;t be seen. If nothing is lost, then innovate.

There are other standards we come across to though. The logo goes in the left corner. This is a standard. Does it stifle creativity? Maybe. Is it a good idea to put your logo someplace else just for the sake of being creative? I don’t think so. However, there may be a good reason why the logo doesn’t need to go there. Maybe in your particular design it makes sense to deviate from the standard. That’s okay IF you have a reason for doing it.

Another standard in design is particular software that is known as the “industry standard”. Photoshop is the industry standard. Does that mean that you have to use it? I don’t think so. Sometimes standards get to be standards out of habit. On the other hand, sometimes standards are standards for a reason. The W3C specifications fall into that category IMO.

I was told by a design teacher once that once you know what the rules are you can break them. I think that applies here. I think that innovations comes from an understanding of what the standard is and why it doesn’t work for your particular project. You can deviate from the standard if your way is actually better and not just different for different’s sake.

This comment form is way too small!!

Thank you for putting the effort into that comment. What you said there really struck a chord with me. It’s pretty much the way I feel about web standards.

I’ll see what I can do with the comment form when I update the commenting facility.

Again, I’m not taking a stand one way or the other. I like standards-based semantic markup that validates whenever possible. I’m just starting discussion and stirring up trouble.

I think someone’s example of Flash perfectly illustrates a point. I remember when using Flash was definitely not the standard because content couldn’t be indexed, people needed plug-ins, etc.

Now Flash seems to be the standard for interactive content because you know you can reach 95% or more of web.