The Toronto web development landscape is a dismal wasteland. I can often be found complaining about the rush of “me-too” type companies, all staking a claim and awarding themselves titles of being the best, most advanced firm in existence. Somehow these companies rack up a list of A-clients and think that alone makes them great companies. Well, honestly, I can’t stand it: you view the source of their sites and suddenly your brain feels like a bowl of warm milk. I very nearly threw my monitor on the floor once.
I’ve said it before: web design isn’t a purely visual medium. To paraphrase the concise words of Andy Rutledge, the Internet is a medium of communication. A good web page isn’t a fancy Photoshop file sliced into XHTML/CSS — the medium is XHTML/CSS. As web designers, this is the canvas we should be putting our brush to.
I don’t lose hope entirely however; there are few like David Crow, who seem to understand the medium. There are others out there in Toronto as well. However, they should be the ones dominating the industry and clearly they are not (or are they? Maybe I just haven’t connected with the right people yet). Somebody needs to put the right people in charge.