Attention: Web Designers Should Not Know How To Code Websites
Web Designers are NOT Web Developers, case in point. I’ve seen a few blog posts around the internet with most saying that Web Designers should know HTML and CSS, I think that is a pretty ridiculous statement to make.
Two different professions, two different sets of skills required and yet everyone seems to think a designer should be able to design a site and then code it, that’s wrong.
Don’t get me started on businesses that insist on hiring a web designer and coder in one, it’s cost cutting and just unrealistic to expect a decent designer to also be a decent coder. It’s like hiring an architect and expecting them to know how to build their own buildings, plain ridiculous.
I understand that a designer should at least know what is possible and what isn’t possible in a web design, but a designer doesn’t need to understand HTML, Javascript or CSS to know what the limitations of a website are.
This is not a two sided argument, designers are designers and developers are developers. The end.
It’s the job of a web developer to educate a web designer on what is possible and hence why there are two separate roles for both professions.
You couldn’t be more wrong. You just mistaken the “graphics designer” with the “web designer”. As the name suggest, the ‘”web designer” designs web pages, therefore he HAS TO KNOW (x)HTML and CSS at a decent level. Just like an architect has to know how a building is built, and what are the properties of differentmaterials, otherwise he will design a building which cannot be built.
Why is that the two web designers and yes they are web designers I work with daily for over the last year at work do not know any (x)HTML or CSS? And yet, they’re able to create great looking websites without knowing a single piece of code.
When I worked for the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) as a contract web developer the designers there also didn’t know a single piece of code and yet they were designing sites trafficked by hundreds of thousands and millions of people.
An architect knows the theory behind how a building is built, he probably doesn’t know how to properly measure, cut and use materials that are used to make the building, an architect is a designer and a contractor / engineer / etc. is the developer.
yes, i think the same at this mater,
BUT at least the designer needs to know how to generate a proper html page.
lately i(a developer) ended up using photoshop to slice and cut(and edit) to make a proper page(that views consistently)
so some designer tasks:
using proper fonts, exporting images for the web, replacing texts(examples) for var names
AND kowing html/css actualy adds to the quality of the desigenr(and cuts overall production time, espessialy with smary or the like)
Mr. Extreme is right. You’re thinking of the graphic designer, not the web designer. The terms “web designer” and “web developer” refer to the same thing. In fact, there are like 100 terms for “web designer”. Anyways, just because some companies hire a person to design the layout, color scheme, etc and hire another person to do the hard coding, doesn’t mean that no web designers should know how to do the graphics, and vice versa. For all of the websites I’ve created, I designed the layouts and created the graphics, and then coded the websites. It’s called versatility. Just because things can be done like an assembly line, where everyone has only one task, doesn’t mean that it has to be.
And just so you know, architects MUST know building materials, proper dimensions, weight load, where to place load bearing walls/beams, etc. So whether he knows how to actually measure and cut wood is inconsequential. If he had to, he could. He knows the technical details to carpentry, so all he would need to learn is how to use a measuring tape (it’s pretty self explanatory) and a saw(whether it’s a hacksaw, circular saw, drywall saw, etc…it’s not hard to figure out). And in some cases, they do also act as the contractor/carpenter.
It’s okay to know how to do more than one thing, in fact, it’s great. And as these 2 are closely related, it’s very common to know both graphic design and web design. So I’m not sure if you worded the title incorrectly or what, but it’s wrong in so many ways – a web designer’s primary job is coding websites and GRAPHIC DESIGNERS can, and usually should, know how to code websites.
In summary, just because some people only do one, very limited task, doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t do more. If you know how to design graphics AND code websites, you’ll easily take the jobs of the people who only do one of those, and you’ll get paid more. Luckily for me, I do both.
Oh and these days, graphic design and web design are beginning to mesh. Due to the constantly declining attention span of people, the load of websites that use sliced images from photoshop for even half of their design/layout is almost always too long. Compared to using mainly CSS for the design, those sites easily take 5 times as long to load. That’s almost as bad as using Flash for an entire site, which is completely useless now (and honestly, had very little use before now, besides for playing media).
What. The. Fuck. Mr Extreme and Eric. You both are fucking idiots. Firstly: a graphic designer and a web designer are too different fucking professions, your responses made me so angry I had to retype this comment 10 times because my mind was clouded with anger from your stupidity and ignorance.
Lets start with graphic design first, shall we?
Graphic design has nothing to fucking do with web design. The terms graphic designer stem back many years before web design was even considered an actual professions. A graphic designer primarily deals with things like brochures and print medium, not web mediums. Got that? Can you and any other nitwit that plans on being so naive comprehend my words?
Okay… Now onto web design.
A web designer is a designer for web sites and graphics. Just because you are a good GRAPHIC DESIGNER does NOT mean you are a good web designer and vice-versa. Both professions are similar in regard to both being design positions, but once you start looking at the specific duties of both, they start to look even different than first glance.
Sure some web designers out there can code their own sites too, good for them. But do you fucking realise how much pressure you’re putting your the designer by expecting them to both design and build the site?
Talk about having a very lengthy time-frame from design to code, lets hope your client doesn’t mind waiting 2 months as opposed to one month while they wait for your designer to “develop the site”.
Now onto web development.
A web developer builds the page. He uses a combination of (x)HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other front-end based languages to turn the design from the WEB DESIGNER into “the real thing”. His time is all spent making sure it looks good in every browser, the time consuming process of developing functionality using JS and making sure that it works in all browsers including for some picky clients mobile phone based browsers.
And finally, a web programmer.
The role “web programmer” is a bit ambiguous because it is usually called many things. Web applications developer, programmer, backend developer… This role is pretty obvious, they do the backend stuff not the front end or design work.
So Eric and Mr Extreme, you should go read a few articles about the difference between a graphic designer and web designer, because trust me, you will find many articles explaining the difference better than I have.
Nice post btw.. shame the author sounds like a bit of a fuck face, but at least he has the right idea unlike the rest of you.
The Truth is…
In today’s business world, no matter the Trade or profession,
One must understand the basics of many adjacent or sub -knowledge domains.
Especially in coding, as the architect of any design, you must implement systems that are functional, understandable, and compatible with the actual sub-knowledge domain end user understanding and capacities.
I agree, they are two really distinct professions (or, as code junkie said, more than two). This is one reason why I believe in template engines such as smarty: they help to keep some distance between the to two fields
I dont agree with you. A web designer should definetely know how to code but dont have to code. I work for a professional company and i both design and code but now i dont have to code because i got a coder. But i dont understand how html and all the web elements work, i can design something thats totally off the odds.
Yes they are both professions but also the market is getting tuffer and tuffer so you will need to up you skills.
im not saying a designer should be a developer, no of course not but should understand html/css inside out.
One instance i gave a task to a web designer that had no idea about coding and he done a fantastic design but had no place for usability, interactivity and basically it was looking wow but useless piece of work.
One major mistake he made was that he made all the fonts in a non web standard font event the content. I asked him how would you display this, His answer was, well we export it as image!
This is just a simple example. Again when saying a designer should know how to code, i dont mean he should know how to develop apps and all that. Obviously you can’t ask a designer to write a script that grabs a table from a database and list the items, but what you should ask a designer is to get the html ready for a developer to implement the server functions.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
AHHHHH! Baki, you piece of shit! Did you not read my previous comment? Did I not explain it properly for you? Do you not speak English as a first language? Are you just stupid and naive?
A designer knowing what they can do and what they can’t is a learning process. There once was a time where a designer putting rounded corners into a design would make any decent developer cringe, now with border radius and things like jQuery it’s a no brainer and takes a few minutes to get rounded corners on elements.
Understanding how a website works and what the limits are does not involve understanding how to code a website. YOU CONFLICTED AGAINST YOUR OWN SELF IN YOUR OWN COMMENT. You said that a designer shouldn’t know how to code, but then basically said that they should.
THERE IS MORE TO DESIGNING THAN JUST PLACES BOXES ONTO A CANVAS IN FIREWORKS OR PHOTOSHOP. THERE IS COLOR THEORY, LAYOUT DESIGN PATTERNS AND OTHER THINGS THAT GO INTO DESIGN.
A decent designer should know what is possible. And about the custom fonts thing, there are so many fonts with a web embeddable licence these days, it’s not even trivial any more. At work we built an entire site using a custom font utilising font face that works in every browser and uses a font that allows legal font face usage.
You know nothing, you know shit about design if you’re still living in your closed minded little world. You are not a designer, wake up to yourself. The technical limits of design have long been lifted.
Also, it’s the developers job to educate the designer. If they design something that isn’t usable, tell them. All designers are willing to compromise if they design something that isn’t possible or is too difficult.
Also, your designer obviously sucked if he knew nothing about creating a usable interface. Designing an interface has nothing to do with development, nor knowing development. It’s know how to structure a design to make people be able to use and understand it. Go crawl back under your rock, I hope it crushes you.
I hate you all (including Dwayne).
All colorful metaphors aside, I agree with Code Junkie. I’ve been doing backend programming and web development for the better part of 15 years. In that time I have never meet a good designer that was a good programmer. That’s not to say they don’t exist, it’s just a really rare breed. Just to be clear, a designer who can install Word Press or some other CMS and customize templates is NOT a good developer IMHO. Sufficient for a project on a small job, probably.
Typically I have found that the better the programmer, the worse the design and vice versa.
What about the other way ?
should coders know how to design ?