I’ve come across a number of people over the years who consider themselves “Web Designers”. However, they’re really just graphic designers who design websites. What’s the distinction? They don’t really know their medium (HTML/CSS).
If you don’t know and understand the presentation layer… how can you effectively design for it?
This post somewhat inspired […]
I’ve come across a number of people over the years who consider themselves “Web Designers”. However, they’re really just graphic designers who design websites. What’s the distinction? They don’t really know their medium (HTML/CSS).
If you don’t know and understand the presentation layer… how can you effectively design for it?
This post somewhat inspired by Jeff Croft’s But who owns Javascript?.
Comments:
- by Jina Bolton (April 27, 2008)
are YOU a web designer???
- by Joshua Lane (April 27, 2008)
- by Jim Jeffers (April 28, 2008)
I’m in 100% with you on this one. We can’t let software soften us from the reality that the markup and the front end coding is our canvas. If you never touch your canvas and take the time to learn about it you won’t be very effective as a designer who depends on it.
- by beth (April 29, 2008)
Amen. We just had to have job title changes at my work because of all the people employed calling themselves web designers who don’t write code. Could you call yourself a print designer if you didn’t understand color separations?
- by ikram (May 11, 2008)
so, if i design in photoshop and handcode my websites, that makes me a webdesigner right? Although I dont like em’s and IE hacks? :) just asking :)
- by SammyK (May 20, 2008)
Yeah, a web designer really needs to have the skills to cut their own designs. I know a ton of guys that can design some really badass designs, but can’t cut it to save their life. Just as painters need to know their tools/paints/canvases, so a web designer should know how to cut.
- by ikram (May 21, 2008)
how about those BIG creative agencies like TBWA, Leo Burnett, etc etc, do they really have webdesigners? or someone give creates a bad ass design and some poor soul has to figure out how the heck to cut it…
- by Whiskey (June 19, 2008)
This is where the “what do you do for a living?” question get’s tricky, right?
(Full disclosure, i do PHP, JS, HTML, CSS, some Graphics utilities and know something about colors and layouts)
There are your Web Layout Graphical Designers, who use (let’s say) Photoshop to get the Template going.
Then you have the Graphical Layout(X)HTML/CSS Translators, you code just on those languages (and/or can do the above job too).
Then you have the PHP/ASP coders, those who take the work from the above guys and using snippets and code will make the data flow inside the (X)HTML/CSS templates. (This guys know about of the above but know not much about design and such).
So “What do you do for a living?”… A:”I make webpages”.
BTW:
how about those BIG creative agencies like TBWA, Leo Burnett, etc etc, do they really have webdesigners? or someone give creates a bad ass design and some poor soul has to figure out how the heck to cut it…
Yeap… they do.
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