[thelist] Designer vs. Coder

Erika Meyer meyer at up.edu
Mon Feb 26 15:40:22 CST 2001


And I asked the gods, what am I, gods? a designer or a coder?

I thought I was a designer until I started looking for work.  They 
saw me and thought:  hmmm... she makes these web pages that have:

1. no fancy flash movies
2. no slicey rollovers nor cool bandwidth-sucking tricky images
3. text links where she could be using graphics
4. plain flat images, tweaked clip art, simple interfaces
5. layouts that change size, that look different in different 
browsers... CSS instead of graphics

the conclusion?  I am a coder.

Not my conclusion, the conclusion of staffing agencies and employers.

So I thought, okay, I like to hand code, I can swing with it.  I like 
building front-ends...

So the 'designers' designed and then they told me how to code, and 
I'd be saying, "what??? are you nuts??? and I'd point out various 
problems, usually usability problems that were a result of 
superficial thinking which in turn was the result of thinking about 
the layout without spending enough time understanding audience needs 
and figuring out how to meet them.

But understanding audience needs was not my job; coding was.  They 
said, "shut up and code."

And then they said "we need more Flash."

***

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you.  But I have one for me.  I'm a 
front-end designer. And being a front-end designer, I'm also an 
information designer.  I am a web-site designer.

I am not a graphic designer.
I work first with information, client goals, audience needs.
Back end, navigation, layout, and graphics all spring from those needs.

I would like to build sites with a graphic and/or multimedia designer 
and with a database designer.

But I think web front-end design can be seen as its own discipline,
of which graphic design is a component.

I think that web interface designers MUST work toward an intimate 
knowledge of markup and CSS.  We must also understand the meaning of 
"separating presentation and content."

But right now, it seems that in mainstream web design, presentation 
is everything.

the nice thing about the web is that it changes so quickly...

Erika


>With all of this talk about using wysiwyg's and coding by hand..  I
>propose the question I've been struggling with...  Can someone be very
>good at both?  Designers I think will tend to drift towards dreamweaver..
>it's faster, its easier, and they can see the designs.. pretty.. *poof*
>there it is.  Coders are interested in back-end...  how it loads, how it's
>handled on different systems/browsers/etc, getting the most done in
>least amount of lines of correct code...
>
>If we seperate content and design, are we also seperating the jobs?
>
>*shrug*
>
>just pondering,
>jeana
>




More information about the thelist mailing list