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Comment by sixtypoundhound | Hacker News Reader

You nailed it. A large fraction of the work effort which was traditionally branded as web-design has been repackaged into additional roles and/or automated and streamlined via tools.

In reality, 60% of my time is spent on web design, but this effort is repackaged into two broader job descriptions: UX developer (requires heavy Javascript code) and web marketer (requires knowledge of analytics, SEO technique, conversion optimization, and a dozen other skills). Plus my frameworks pick up a lot of the lower level details of setting up and managing a web-page.

Not seeing a shortage of work in those two spaces....

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Yeah. What is even web design these days? I consider myself pretty good at making a website look nice, but I don't design it in Photoshop.

From my observations it's a matter of picking a nice wordpress theme and customizing it for your brand.

How many of the websites you love to use are built on wordpress themes?

some large sites using wordpress

1. TechCrunch 2. The New Yorker 3. BBC America 4. The Official Star Wars Blog 5. Variety 6. Sony Music 7. MTV News 8. Beyonce 9. ebay Inc 10. PlayStation.Blog 11. Best Buy 12. Xerox 13. Bata 14. Quartz 15. ESPN Product Blog 16. Nokia Conversations 17. Ford Social 18. Fortune 19. Time Inc. 20. Facebook Newsroom 21. The New York Times Company 22. Marks & Spencer for Business 23. Google Ventures 24. Harvard Business Review Blogs 25. Larry King Liveblog 26. The Official Rackspace Blog 27. Philips DirectLife Coach Blog 28. ExpressJet Airlines 29. Inside BlackBerry 30. Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club 31. The Rolling Stones 32. The Walking Dead – AMC 33. The Mozilla Blog 34. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog 35. Dallas Mavericks 36. Wil Wheaton 37. Snoop Dogg 38. SAP News Center 39. Wolverine Worldwide 40. Reuters Blogs

I can't say I "love" TechCrunch, but it is built on WordPress... Although, I see your point about generic themes.

Smashing Magazine, Techcrunch,... about 25% of them.

As with all design, it's not about making it look nice.

That's true, but I think that's what a lot of people think it is.

I'm also a software dev. I wouldn't say, when designing code, that "I make the code look nice" though, I'd hope that's at least part of it.

However... when someone is looking for a "designer," while it does include UI/UX (again, whatever that is ;) ) I've found they strictly only want someone who is good at making pretty things in Photoshop.

I think your post could do with some bullet points about what design is.

You're right.

The process of making form follow function, maybe?

Definition of design: a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is built or made.

So, I guess "web designer" is very similar to "make it in Photoshop" and I should stop complaining ;)

I'd say that definition defines the outcome of design, not design itself. I focused on the "process" deliberately, because most design work happens outside whatever tool you use to externalize your plan/vision.

It's reductive to conceive design as the design outcome, IMHO. If you have a guy doing all the UX work (alignment with business needs, research, gather data, analysis, IA, brand identity integration, etc.) and other guy which takes all this work and produces UI mock-ups in Photoshop, who did most design work?

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