Your description of a web designer's job is pretty good, your expectations of that web designer's ability to control design decisions is rather unrealistically

Your description of a web designer's job is pretty good, your expectations of that web designer's ability to control design decisions is rather unrealistically high. Of course, you toss out that attempt at salvation by implying that if someone higher up the chain dictates design changes then they become the designer but then I find that just as offensive as the author's original blame of the designer. You are saying anyone who makes design decisions is a web designer and I fully disagree with you there, because you are implying that anyone can be a web designer. A web designer is not someone that makes design decisions based on anything but design principles to only toss it downward to some peon with crayons to take care of. We don't know the story here, maybe the web designer is to blame or maybe not. Plus, the popup is an usability problem, not a design problem.