Shockingly, it's not. Most places I know of are moving away from a the designer and frontend developer positions. It's a big cost savings, not just in salary but in cycle time as well. Our designer sends us his designs in HTML. There is no bickering over fonts, no pixel perfection, no stupid photoshop-isms -filters, drop shadows, embossing, etc. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even have photoshop.
If you're a web designer and you can't do this, it's time to learn. You're a theoretical web designer drawing pictures of websites.
Most places I know of are moving away from a the designer and frontend developer positions.
Is just in regards to bare HTML/CSS or JavaScript interaction as well? I’d think most companies would be hard-pressed to find a designer that could write in the full HTML/CSS/JS stack needed for webapps these days and be equally competent in interaction or visual design – as ironic as that sounds – in which case FEDs are still very important in the process.
You'd think that, but I've met some very good designers that can work that full stack. The world is changing and people need to upskill or get left behind.
HTML/CSS is not that difficult. Even jQuery is pretty simple. Good jQuery is hard. Good Javascript harder still.
I also think developers are getting much savvier about design, and the tools helping developers with design are getting better and better. So the person who winds up doing all the design/html/css/js may not be the person who started out as the designer. So designers, by all means, harvest that fear and push yourself to learn some new skills.
But then such designer is not a target for this "Manifesto".
BTW, I see value in having one person create designs as HTML files, but I also know a lot of designers who create beautiful, graphics-rich designs and don't know much about code. I suppose it's much harder to find people who can do both as good as separate people.
Graphics rich designs that don't come with the markup, aren't beautiful. Any designer that can't code his own markup isn't a designer worth having, and certainly isn't a web designer. He's a print designer who doesn't know he's obsolete.
If you can't build me a complete cross browser HTML template, a skin, for a website, you aren't a web designer. That means you must know HTML, CSS, browser idiosyncrocies, and possibly some very light JavaScript. Developers should never even see a PSD file or worry about what it looks like in IE. That's a designers job.
> If you can't build me a complete cross browser HTML template, a skin, for a website, you aren't a web designer.
If you've found such people - great. In places I've worked it was different. And designers did exceptionally beautiful things which I really appreciate. I'm proud that I've worked with them, even if they left some mess to be cleaned.
There is some knowledge and experience needed in dealing with IE6, having CSS well organized, images optimized, adding even light JavaScript.
If I was hiring (I do not), I'd totally prefer to have two people who can together build something great, than look for one person and receive worse results.
And I'd prefer my people to do what they do best. The skillset required in designing rich graphics is different than coding.
Hate to tell you bub, but none of that is coding. It's all simple markup, and a designer that can't do his own markup just isn't qualified, there are far too many available candidates that can to even bother talking to one who can't.
If all someone knows is making pretty images in photoshop, they simply aren't web designers, they're print designers who dabble in the web, amateurs.
> they're print designers who dabble in the web, amateurs
They're print designers but definitely not amateurs.
In the end, what really matters is that the client receives very high quality work and it is cost effective for the company. I understand that not every company works this way, but I have worked for and know some that do exactly this.
I don't really want to discuss it anymore, I feel we're repeating the same arguments over and over.
I couldn't disagree more. Good HTML/CSS/JS code is not easy. It's hard work to make it look right for all browsers.. and these days you use actual programming languages (i.e. less/Sass) instead of CSS, anyway. It's hard work involving programming expertise to implement all JavaScript bells and whistles a modern website is expected to have. So it requires a good front end PROGRAMMER to do.
On other hand, a good designer is a creative person. They're not coders and shouldn't be expected to muck around with code. They're artists, who draw beautiful designs from blank page. The need for separation of roles couldn't be clearer to me, and I run a company that makes websites.
Right off I wanted to disagree about the preprocessor use for CSS. I just can't see that something like those has taken off so much that it's on the same level as something like jQuery.
But then it made me curious, I can't say that since I have no numbers and it's just an assumption. Are there any indicators of how popular tools like less or sass have become as opposed to regular CSS?
"If you're a web designer and you can't do this, it's time to learn. You're a theoretical web designer drawing pictures of websites."
I couldn't agree more. At this point, if you're still designing the same way you would for print (and honestly, most designers I've worked with still do), you are going to be replaced.
Yeah I agree, I didn't get this email and I was frantically checking their blog, which looks dead, and their website, which hasn't changed to reflect anything said in the email.
Shockingly, it's not. Most places I know of are moving away from a the designer and frontend developer positions. It's a big cost savings, not just in salary but in cycle time as well. Our designer sends us his designs in HTML. There is no bickering over fonts, no pixel perfection, no stupid photoshop-isms -filters, drop shadows, embossing, etc. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even have photoshop.
If you're a web designer and you can't do this, it's time to learn. You're a theoretical web designer drawing pictures of websites.