disclaimer: this post is long, at times geeky and mostly written to designers from a designer’s perspective, but I think there’s a little worth for anyone who’s willing.

So if you’re not immersed in or nerdy about following the web design community you may have missed out on the string of discussions and debates that were sparked by one little tweet by Elliot Jay Stocks that called out ‘web designers’ who don’t code. The community responded directly to the tweet, other respected minds in the community wrote their own posts here, here and here and I’m sure many other blogs and tumblrs.

I followed this when it went down and the fact I’m writing about it now makes me feel like the guy walking up to the group of people laughing at a joke and tries to fit in by laughing, only to have the people laughing stop laughing and look at me. Screw it, IMMA BLOGABOUTIT ANYWAY. Mostly because I was brewing on writing a post on designing for the web for awhile before this great debate happened (this debate actually gave my post some meat to get the thought train rolling – meat, rolling, train, wha?)

Throughout the back and forth of this discussion I felt like a little ship getting sloshed around by waves from experts. I was being convinced of every side of the argument, which leads me to believe there is no one ‘right answer in this debate’. Let me expound on a few of the thoughts that stood out. From Mark Boulton’s post:

“Let’s look, for a moment, at Tele­vi­sion. TV is a mature broad­cast medium. Good telly is not about pixels, or how the they get sent from one place to another. Good TV is about storytelling, engage­ment, audi­ence, inter­ac­tion and a whole lot more.”

You said it Mark. Let’s have a drink together – I’m buying. This is so true and I already have a list of people in my head who may stop reading this post at this point and take that quote as their new gospel. But, as illustrated in a point about fashion design by emenel an understanding in the craft is necessary:

“As a web designer the equivalent would be knowing enough HTML, CSS, JS, (etc) to create a version of your idea, something good enough to convey your creative vision and be constructed fairly well. Does it have to be ready to launch for a million people? Absolutely not.”

Righty-o man! When I read this I was reminded of my years in design school and early days in agency life, making books by hand, cutting and pasting tiled print outs to convey a large format poster and hand preparing paper mock ups of a brochure or a collateral folder. We as designers need to be able to convey a website to the client in a true form. Yes, that’s what Photoshop is for.

Ah Photoshop, an amazingly wonderful tool. A program that I intentionally stayed away from for years because I saw it exploited and made to do things it was not intended to do. Coming from a print background, PS to me was to touch up photos, crop and color correct. I still believe this is the strength of this program, but I understand and am much more comfortable with PS’s tools, which are yes indeed quite dense. It can literally do just about anything you want it to do, you’re often only limited by your own imagination (After Effects is in the same camp).

But, just because you can do anything with something does not mean you should do anything with something (paraphrase from Jurassic Park). I’ve learned to love or at least become so comfortable with PS to the point that doing a web mockup in any other fashion, be it illustrator or in browser, to be quite honest scares some little part of me that wants televisions to still be in large wooden boxes that sit on the floor despite the fact that LCD progressive 1080i yada yada are much better (I don’t have one so I don’t know). My reasoning isn’t rational, but it’s my reasoning so it’s valid, right?

PS has become my crutch, but ask any web designer how fun it is to dig through 200+ layers to make a simple change, copying and pasting layer styles to 15 different layers, updating text on multiple layer comps (are we even utilizing these?) going back and saving jpgs of the website, then dropping the jpg in a static screen grab of a web browser, placing in indesign, exporting as pdf then sending to client.

Then ask the same update be made to a front end developer who has both design and coding capabilities, watch them make a few quick edits to their css document, save and update their browser on their development server (which the client can already view in the medium the site will be viewed in). Just ask, sit back and watch. It’s not about speed to market, but it’s kind of about speed to market. It’s also about making everyone’s lives easier. From clients, to creatives, to bosses on both sides of the equation (to whom the reality of the bottom line is a truth we cannot nor should try to shake).

You catch the little thing about rationality up there? It all comes back to the man who sparked this debate with his tweet. That same day he posted a blog explaining more fully his thoughts. One part spoke to me. Challenged me and highlighted why diving into the pool I have studied and walked around has been so difficult. I’ve spoken for months about the benefit of designers who can code, but I’ve just begun to even get my hands dirty. This statement here is why:

There are some great designers out there who don’t know how to code and some of them produce amazing things for the web. But whatever excuse is given basically falls down when you look at one simple fact:

It’s easy.

That’s right: writing HTML and CSS is so easy, that there’s actually no excuse not to learn how.

Then why doesn’t everybody do it? </thirdgradesnark> But seriously. Part of me knows that html and css isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. I’m amazed and impressed by the intellect of a good deal of coders, programmers and devs I know, but not all of them. Why then is this how I feel in regard to coding my own designs for the web?

While this drawing is a true to form depiction of how I feel right now, what it doesn’t show is the mountains and hills I’ve climbed for the past 14 years to get me to where I am now. This doesn’t show me discovering graphic design as a job path in junior high, or me teaching myself how to use adobe software, coding an Aerosmith fan site with a welcome page that featured a ‘frames or no frames’ option then going on to a school who was more versed in print design fundamentals than they were preparing me or nurturing my skillset to prepare me for the web world (blame is wholly on me for letting my coding go dormant for years though).

This illustration doesn’t show the skills that I have mastered, even if there is still room for more mastery, which there definitely is. Truth be told, I got to a place where I’ve learned a good deal and in the last year my focus and knowledge has expanded in a new direction, but adding more and learning more seems daunting. I am reminded by some words that were given to me almost a year ago which lead to one of my first blogs. I don’t have to know where the path I’m on will lead, what specific skills I will or will not learn and I’m amazed at the amazing people I continue to meet and connect with. I don’t have to have it all figured out, I just have to decide that’s the direction I’m going.

I am going to take a step out in faith and I know deep down if you’re a designer who has struggled or been curious about learning the craft behind the designs, you want to as well. We don’t have to, but it’s probably in our best interest. And even if it’s not easy it won’t hurt forever and I’m sure we’ll all be thankful once we have and will likely be saying ‘oh html and css, that’s easy’ in no time.

Or perhaps you will hold onto the ‘architect/engineer’ mindset and who am I to say whether or not that is valid and whether or not that might be where I end up as well, but I urge you to respect the engineer, lean on his/her expertise, listen to their voice and embrace the idea of true creative collaboration. Because without this I can assure you that we will be missing out on many great solutions that we cannot craft up in photoshop alone.

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Other takeaways worth your time and articles that helped inspire this post (whatever that’s worth)

http://forrst.com/ community connecting designers who code and developers who design to share, connect and inspire.

http://www.visitmix.com/Articles/The-Anatomy-of-Web-Design amazing article about the process of design and web design collaboration.

http://www.printmag.com/Article/Oscars-of-Type sexy type from the past year

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/emen/ Sparked some thoughts in regard to knowledge of tools for better type treatment in online design