Should Web Designers Code? A Personal View

In the ELATED Extra ( http://www.elated.com/newsletter/ ) this week I discuss this blog post offering "Five Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code":

http://carsonified.com/blog/uncategorized/5-good-reasons-why-designers-should-code/

I argue that it's now more important for designers to look in other directions, earlier in the chain, towards user experience, information architecture and usability. This is a better use of their time than worrying about HTML and CSS coding.

What do you think? Should designers know anything at all about HTML and CSS, or should they leave that to the coders?

Simon

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Personally, I like the way the author summarized the whole issue in his point #1 "The combination of a designing in Photoshop (or whatever software you use) along with HTML & CSS is greater than the sum of their parts." I feel its best for a designer to know a bit about coding and vice versa.

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I worked with only design for quite a few years and left "web coding" strictly alone. I recently fell into doing a charity website and had to learn html/css coding. Now I'm addicted and I'm not the only one!

I find it very helpful to know what can be done with markup and css, and how much trouble it is. I think it's a lot easier on both programmer and designer if they've had a go at what the other does - at the very least it promotes respect

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Leslie

I completely agree with what you guys have said. I do think it's important to know some code as a designer, but I think it's often enough to know what's achievable, rather than knowing exactly how to deliver it to a completely pro standard.

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Simon, you're right. I think its enough to know what's achievable. When designers know what's achieveable, then they're in a better position to get the best out of the coders and this will definitely build mutual respect as Leslie says.

Unfortunately, in the some developing countries, competition is so stiff that the lines between professional coders and designers are often blurred as everyone tries to be a 'jack of all trades'. In some cases this has had a negative effect as the final product of such efforts is mediocre at best.

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I think this is the point - it's very hard to do everything well,and if you try, there'll likely be compromises, resulting in less-than-great results.

Simon

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The steps to designing a so-called standards-compliant layout requires at least a working knowledge of CSS. The old days of slicing and dicing for tables-based layouts are long gone. Unfortunately, for Photoshop users, only Joseph Lowery has published a decent book on Web Workflows, but his is the only one I know of. Thank goodness there are lost of web sites (like this one and Six Revisions, for example) that have free tutorials on offer.

More to the point regarding what it is or is not useful to know is whether one is self employed or looking for employment. If you're on your own, you can be selective about what services you care to offer, based on your knowledge and skills, but the same freedom does not apply on the commercial market. Check out the career ads for web designers and see what's on demand. Heck...look at what's being demanded of "graphic designers' and you'll find included on employer's list of must haves most of the skills that were once required of web designers. Employers today want one person who can do the work of five people.

If web design is your forte, and your only tool is Photoshop — and you're expecting to make a good living — you're going to need to be a blazingly fast, outstanding design guru with an amazing list of clients in hand. For me, graphic design encompasses everything from print to the web, and includes a working knowledge of CSS and XHTML. I look to third parties for heavy-duty scripting and server-side programming.

Nice conversation so far! I am a communication design, like some may know, and I learned some HTML and CSS for school. Well, I don't «code» by hand. I understand what some of the code means, the ways some of it interacts, I must admit that I am bad at CSS nowadays, 3 years ago I was a bit better, specially because I didn't, and I don't, like that much webdesign. I am a «print» dude... I enjoy type, I love the software by itself. I am a Photoshop fan and that's it... I like the tools to prepare stuff to print. Web is more to use, rather then to create... Despite all that, I am refreshing my knowledge on that subject because my girlfriend is surprisingly happy learning webdesign, and enjoying, and I am going to tutor her, like some may also know, and I am preparing myself to teach and help her... So, bottom line, as for always in life, I guess, it is always good to know at least a bit of everything... I consider myself a «wide-spectrum» person, who tends to have an opinion and a bit of knowledge, on everything, so, yes, we definitely should learn code, if not to code by hand, to understand limitations...

Cheers from Portugal!

Márcio Guerra

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Or something like it...
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Good points all. Speaking as a web coder by trade, I dabble in design because I enjoy it, and because it makes life easier when communicating with designers (and encourages mutual respect as Leslie says). However, if I'm working on a proper web project I'll let the expert designers (like Simon) handle the design side of things.

I'd imagine if you're primarily a designer like Márcio then it works the other way round.

@inspiredmac: You're right, most job ads do ask for every skill under the sun. That said, I think this has always been the case - I remember seeing programming job ads in the late 90s that asked for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Perl, ASP, C++ and Photoshop skills, on top of the usual "excellent communicator and team player" stuff. That would be one crazy job!

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