by admin | Mar 18, 2015 | Design, Dev, Rants, Web |
Code and Design Are two vastly different disciplines. So I see a lot of people talking about how designers should code. How it makes sense for frontend code to be produced in the design phase. Now, to a point, I agree. I definitely agree that being able to write code will help a web designer better understand the medium they are designing for. However does that make coding a prerequisite for designing in the digital space? No. No. No. As an analogy, in photography people always talked about the need to know about the developing process to truly master taking a picture – and yet we find ourselves now I’m the digital age, where a vast number of photographers have NO concept of how a digital print is produced. Many of these photographers produce great photography. Writing code is not a pre-requisite for good design. Web is the same: you don’t actually have to write code to design great web sites or user experiences. I will grant that the understanding will probably help, but it is by no means a prerequisite. Obviously, if you don’t implement your own designs, you will need to rely on a developer to do this for you, which leaves you open to the stereotypical “it’s technically impossible” issue, where the dev just can’t be bothered to implement it. However, this is a process issue and has very little to do with your design. Compartmentalisation is sometimes necessary for creativity. As a designer and developer, I have to try very, very hard to compartmentalise when I design, so that my visual creativity is not limited... by Alex Holt | May 3, 2008 | Design, Web |
Having learned design for web around the same time as print, rather than being a converted print designer – I’ve always been a fan of gridless or semi-gridded design. I like fluid layouts that aren’t reliant on exact positioning. Partly this stems from early in my career when people would window switch between nutscrape and ie and ask me to rectify “bugs” where a block of text was starting 1 pixel too high or low. To me (so long as its lining up isn’t a design feature) I couldn’t care less about these so called bugs. The way I see it, unless I can find that design flaw WITHOUT checking both browsers then I see absolutely no reason to “fix” it. After all, day to day users of a web site don’t check the site in multiple browsers, so so long as the page doesnt scream “I shouldn’t look like this” I am happy, the audience are happy and the client ought to be happy. Of course there will always be perfectionists who chant for pixel perfect, cross browser design (I have some clients who still ask for it – and like a good mac monkey, I strive to oblige) but the truth is that as designers and devleopers it is our responsibility to educate our clients about the pros and cons of these sorts of issues. After all we are supposed to be professionals. We are supposed to be experts. And we should behave (and be treated) as such. I firmly believe thay my profession as a web developer is almost as specialised (although slightly more accesible) than that of a... 