Comments on: Contrasting Approaches To Web Design

By: One thing blog designers must have : Tracey Grady Design | Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:38:48 +0000

[...] good web designer should also have a working knowledge of XHTML and CSS, the fundamentals for quality, standards-based web design. Additionally, it’s expected that [...]

By: Vivien

Vivien — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:01:18 +0000

Warenwirtschaft, there are many web sites nowadays with little or almost no graphics, but those sites look as stunning and at times more elegant than the ones filled with gorgeous illustrations. After all design is not only about beautiful graphics, and I think web design is more than any other field of design is about communication and friendly user experience.

So in that sense, I have to agree with Kristarella. And especially with the price that many clients are willing to pay for the site design it makes no sense to spend days on creating from scratch every piece of graphics. Plus, don’t some Graphic Designers use stock images in their work?

By: kristarella

kristarella — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:10:13 +0000

Warenwirtschaft, what kind of graphics are you talking about? I don’t see anything wrong with a web designer using stock photography or vectors to save a little time and money, while they concentrate their efforts on making a functional and attractive layout.

By: Warenwirtschaft

Warenwirtschaft — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:17:21 +0000

Many graphic designers are web designers too. I love to design logos, pages, and so on, and I love to make websites. By the way web designer could do their own HTML and CSS, but what does a web designer without graphics? I can’t believe that a web designer buys graphics or search them in google or somewhere else, would they? That would make no sense, i think.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:42:41 +0000

It’s great that you taught yourself CSS, seo blog. I’ve been working with it since its inception, but I constantly find something new to learn in CSS. It would be great though and very helpful if all browsers supported CSS2 and CSS3.

By: seo blog

seo blog — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:40:24 +0000

I have never properly learned CSS nor any kind of code. What I know is what I taught myself. I am still able to code my own templates however and end up with a complaint final result.

By: LaurenMarie - Creative Curio

LaurenMarie - Creative Curio — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:59:41 +0000

Yeah… as much as I would love to call myself a web designer, I wouldn’t. That is a really good way to gauge how I think about it! I never thought of that before.

I don’t call myself a web designer because a majority of my projects are print and I can’t code (but the reason is more due to the former). But I think someone who primarily (maybe 70%+) designed websites could be considered a web designer, even if they didn’t know the coding side. Though as many have mentioned, understanding the medium and being able to converse about it is necessary.

I think of database designers (my mom is one, so I know a little about the profession): they know how he DB works, what they want it to do and what it should do, but would never be able to create the complex joins and interdependent links between systems. They can tell a programmer what needs to be done, but couldn’t do it themselves.

But I think if I were designing sites more, I would want to learn the coding, too, so I could do most of the site myself and break off into freelancing. Of course, more complex DB driven sites and ecommerce security stuff would require a programmer, but for basics it would be good to know.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:14:28 +0000

Ben, thanks for elaborating more on the point in my post — designers should know the medium they design for inside and out. In the case of Web, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to know HTML/CSS.

Aaron, I agree that designers should be aware of how their designs will look on Web when different kind of users are accessing it, but I’m not convinced that a slight grasp of HTML/CSS will help them to design something that doesn’t break when readers increase/decrease the font size.

Lauren, your recent re-design is certainly a proof on how a designer and programmer can effectively work with each other. I still don’t really know though if someone who doesn’t know HTML/CSS can be called a Web Designer. Would you call yourself a Web Designer, or a Graphic Designer?

Darren, I agree. That’s why I said that I neither agree nor disagree with 37signals. They found something that works for them, their products, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else should follow the same path.

Warenwirtschaft, glad to see that you too think the knowledge of HTML/CSS tend to limit designer’s creativity. I think like in everything there will always be advantages and disadvantages in any workflow. We just need to find out what works the best for us, our projects, and yes, we need to know the medium we create for.

There are also some very interesting comments over at Mark Boulton’s blog where he epxressed his thoughts on the recent 37 signals’ posts.

By: Warenwirtschaft

Warenwirtschaft — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:45:26 +0000

I think that it is very important to have 2 persons in the process: The designer and the coder.
I am a coder myself and i know the tendency to create designs that are easy to do in HTML/CSS. Thats the death of any creative design. We often get interesting challanges from designers because they do not think with the problems of HTML in their mind. They just let their creativity flow and that brings new ideas.
Of course then they have to work closely with the designer to check what is really possible.
Whats more important for the designer is a profound knowledge of User Interface design and information architecture. Thats much more important than HTML skills.

By: Darren

Darren — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:10:28 +0000

I think there was some real confusion coming out of those 37signals posts because they didn’t distinguish enough between demo’ing an ‘interface/experience’ and demo’ing a ‘design’ in the sense most of us know. They probably could have framed the discussion better.

As so many others have said, 37signals’ products are very specific and unique, so it’s not surprising their process is too.