Conventions are a one way street, standards run both ways. Because of standards, the Web pages we create can be viewed on a vast variety of computers. If the standards were more exact and more rigidly adhered to, the overall experience would be even better. Unlike conventions, standards are not counter-creative. Another close cousin of convention is 'fashion'.
Fashion is a 'closed convention'.
It allows you to be both conventional and different at the same time. It means that your convention is different from the conventions of the masses. It even gives you a license to put down other conventions without having any good reasons to do so. Fashions can be creative, in fact they usually are for a short period of time. Eventually, they become scorned as being 'old hat' and melt back into the quagmire of mass convention.