Poll: How would you rate your design skills?
Thursday August 9, 2007
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Building Web pages requires many diverse skillsets. I generally divide them into three primary areas: writing, programming, and design. When I started as a Web developer, the field was dominated by programmers who learned HTML and figured out how to do graphics and content by doing. And the sites of that era (10-15 years ago) showed it. But now the writing and design of sites is a lot easier to control and so you see a lot more design and quality writing and the focus on programming is much less. How important do you think design is to Web development? If you don't consider yourself a designer do you work with designers? If you are an expert designer how did you learn?
How would you rate your design skills? Remember, you can only vote once, so please read all the choices before you click one.
Comments
If Content Management Systems is becoming a real big thing, then why is programming so important in web design? Surely CMS will allow programmers to do their thing while the designers can do their jobs without having to be concerned over coding/programming, yes?
Hi Brandon: Well, my gut reaction is to say “we’ll see…” and tap my foot.
Seriously, CMS has it’s part to play, but often CMS is controlled by the programmers themselves, and they put in arbitrary (at least from the designer’s perspective) rules and requirements on the design. That’s been my experience, at least. When you are in control of something, you’re going to make it work best for you and then worry about the other chumps who have to use it.
On the other hand, I tried in the post, to call the position “Web Development” rather than “Web Design”. This is because I think of Web Development as the all-inclusive whole that includes programming, design, and content. So to answer your question another way, I would say that programming wouldn’t be important to a Web designer but it would be important to the Web Development team which includes the designers.
On a third hand, I think that the best sites integrate the design into the programming and vice-versa. You can always tell when the programmers are sitting in their corner of the office and the designers are sitting in another corner, and every once in a while one member of each team throws something over the wall to the other. The design isn’t integrated with the behavior and the behaviors don’t complement the design. So designers, in my opinion, should always be concerned about the programming and programmers should be concerned about the design.
I hesitate to call myself a designer because my artistic skills are just so so … When I think design, I think pencil to paper perfection! I think of Debbie K in my elementary school days who could draw better than a picture … I feel intimidated by design sometimes. I design in Dreamweaver. I want to put it into DW first and see if I can make it look just so - I am pretty confident in using DW.
I am very good at what I do, but not as confident in the arena of graphic design, though I do okay if I can find the right pieces to “throw together!”
I am not very creative with pencil and paper, but give me a computer and I can play and find a nice look and feel - only one professor told me that it was okay to do it that way. Everyone else insisted on thumbnails, roughs and then the final look. It drove me crazy and it never worked for me yet my web designs are always viewed as professional and look great (as per others comments, not just my own).
I guess I am a designer - I can put stuff together and make it look pretty nice most of the time. *smile*
I attended Westwood College Online and have a B.S. in Web Design and Multimedia.
Design is very important to me no matter if it is a web site or a chair. In my travels, I won’t even buy poorly designed Tshirts. I went to college to a Photography/Filmmaking school. In our first 2 years we had a Layout and Design class so we could learn how our work would be used as an ad or magazine cover. These were the Jurassic years of press type and “for position only” layouts. I don’t consider myself a designer but, this basic knowledge has served me well.
In a land where everyone is “above average,” I rated myself as “average,” because I’ve found sites whose design makes me drool and others that make me gag. Mine snuggles nicely between the two, and it has seen several design revisions — the last three, among my favourites.
I like working with graphics, and am near the end of my graphic adolescence, which required that every image had everything I knew in it. I left web design adolescence some time ago and my visitors are most grateful.
I learn from these articles and surveys. My thinking tends to parallel the majority, but not always. It is those times of disagreement that are the most creative — and instructional.
Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm
I’ve recently build a new site using Drupal and I am really happy with the results. There are so many modules (add ons) that I feel that the design was very flexible to meet my needs. The layout template I chose is very configurable. I had the design ideas in my mind and I am a bit slow on anything beyond “basic” programming. In my opinion, web development is not a one size fits all hat. CMS definatly has a place for those of us who are better at graphics and design and weak on advanced programming. There are other options for people who’s strengths lie in other areas.
FYI, here is the url for my Drupal site.