Design portfolios these days are stuffed with traditional odds and ends: a few logos, some packaging, some print, and?to appear relevant?a bit of web work. This betrays a disturbingly pervasive view of web design as being yet another socket wrench in any given designer’s toolbox. As a discipline, web design has specific needs and benefits that demand experience and informed approaches, specific to the media. Ignorance to these necessities causes those factors to be skewed, downplayed, or outright ignored in order to force the web to fit anachronistic and inappropriate ideas of design.
Web design is its own unique discipline, and therefore requires a distinct type of designer. This consummate web designer has the expertise to focus not only on aesthetic appeal, but also clean, semantic markup, empowering them to fashion the well-crafted web product that clients are growing to expect. A chronic failure to see this within the creative industries is creating needless tension and is draining countless dollars from both agency revenues, and the profits of their clients.
Designers Don’t Code. Web Designers Do.
Beyond Photoshop or Dreamweaver, the most consequential resource for a web designer is the intimate working knowledge and understanding of the web’s constraints that can only come from developing front-end code. Constraints should be nothing new to designers. No matter the media, design practitioners operate under restrictions 99% of the time. Finding ways to transcend limitations distinguishes us as artists, but only doing so when it is relevant and appropriate grounds us professionals. This is where web design breaks from the more established design disciplines: The web requires a designer with an aptitude for understanding front-end development languages and how they balance and/or constrain the aesthetics.
Any web designer’s driving focus must be to create a functional, contextual and visually appealing experience. To do this well requires a skill that every design discipline requires: the imposing of control to even the most meticulous of details. For the consummate web designer, this includes crafting the entire product, especially the front-end code. They do not merely provide the design concept because to them, that is not web design, its speculation. Handing off layouts to another person for development is surrendering the control of too many variables. Does this other person have the same intimate understanding of the project goals? Does he or she have the same level of care about details such as negative space and color distribution? Do they even know why Georgia was used in order provide an appropriate font substitute in the CSS? A web designer should understand that everything that controls the display of a site’s content falls in to their sphere of responsibility, because only a designer’s expertise is suited to deliver the scrutiny and craft needed for a truly quality product.
Designers that detest the idea of touching code don’t need to learn it. They can go off and be the great designers they know they are, but they should avoid the web altogether. Also, front-end developers that do not consider themselves design decision-makers need to realize that they inherently make decisions that directly influence the design, and should be knowledgeable about the results of those decisions. Whether they like it or not, they are playing the role of designer, and that is not a responsibility that should be low on any priority list. (more…)
