Cameron Yule

Designer vs Web Designer

I read an article recently on the Blue Flavor blog, Who Owns JavaScript?, which was debating where the responsibility for coding JavaScript lies within an agency. The two options they gave were “designer” or “developer” and here’s their descriptions of the two roles;

…“designers” do the client-side things (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, etc.), and “developers” do the server-side things (PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, .NET, etc.). 

After I’d recovered from the shock of imagining a designer being asked to code some nice object–oriented JavaScript or some heavy–duty AS3, I realised they were in fact talking about a web designer. An important distinction for sure.

That in itself still raises further questions for me though. In my experience from the three agencies I’ve worked at so far (one purely digital, one digital/print and now print/digital), a simplified process of building a web site runs as such;

  1. Designer gets spec for website, beings planning.
  2. Designer produces initial comps for client.
  3. Designer incorporates client feedback into design (repeat as required).
  4. Designer passes final designs to Developer.
  5. Developer looks at final designs, beings planning (may feedback to Designer).
  6. Developer creates HTML.
  7. Developer creates CSS (may occur simultaneously with 6).
  8. Developer creates JS/Flash.
  9. Developer cross-browser/QA tests.

Even taking into consideration that this is a very simplified list and one intended to make a point, the dividing line there should be immediately obvious; the designer designs, the developer does the build.

Is it just me, or does this way of working make sense as opposed to blurring the boundaries?

Published on May 19, 2008 in Design, Programming
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Comments

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Andrew
20/05/2008

The first two places I worked had a slightly different (more common? More retarded?) approach.

1) Developer told the name of a company and what they sold
2) Developer creates design for said company
3) Developer makes templates for said designs
4) Developer integrates templates into homebrew CMS
5) Developer trains customer on CMS
6) Developer deals with support requests

Feel free to swap in Developer with Designer with Support-monkey!

Now though, I know people who are virtually 100% HTML/CSS, who are just taking baby steps into JavaScript and who haven’t/won’t touch server-side languages. Impressive!

Cameron
20/05/2008

I’d like to hope that the first two places you mention are in the minority, but somehow I’ve got a feeling they’re not.

Solely doing HTML/CSS is a job position so limiting that I can’t imagine any serious agency would be actively looking for just that individual skill – especially when you consider the number of people able to do the same but so much more besides (JS, Flash, Server-Side) …

Madness!

Paul
20/05/2008

Nice post Cam.

I believe it is fair enough for designers to dabble in js/flash but when your separating languages to certain roles this must fall to the developer as the designer is likely to fall at the first hurdle.

It all depends on who is driving the ship and what sort of background they came from, design/ dev (if any). Maybe also on workload, if the company gets more dev work than they can handle it ultimately fall to the designers to handle the learning curve.

As for Andrew’s previous employment, replace support-monkey, with super -monkey

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