Here’s an edited excerpt from an interesting blog item I saw today on Typophile, posted by web developer Nicholas Shanks (link to full post). While this is certainly old news to most on the (web) design front, I appreciated the reiteration of a valuable lesson in self-promotion 101: never lose sight of the potential client in everyone!

How Not to Promote Yourself to Potential Customers

I was looking around at the websites of typographers earlier today, and came across the site of one independent designer (whom I shall not name) which looked so broken on my computer I had to email him and explain what was wrong with his HTML and CSS, and how standards-compliant coding practices would rectify them. I am a professional web developer and like to educate others about web standards and accessibility, to help improve the web in my own little way. The response I got back, however, shocked me:

“These are all visual problems caused by your settings. The site was meant to be viewed the way I designed it. I won’t tailor the site to meet every possible variable of every combination of browser customizations.”

I reminded him that the only computer on which his site can “be viewed the way he designed it” was his own. I will no longer be recommending this designer to my clients.