Web designers should do their own HTML/CSS | Hacker News Reader

Web designers should do their own HTML/CSS

37signals.com

18 pointsterpua17 comments

"I’ve worked with many web designers in the past who only did abstractions and then handed over pictures to be chopped and implemented by “HTML monkeys”."

Are there actually designers who don't have to get their hands dirty with HTML/CSS? I've never met 1 in my 8 years of designing and building sites. Sounds like a nice gig.

I've worked with many at various design and ad shops. However, they design for other media as well and aren't expected to know HTML/CSS. I've been handed "web" layouts in Quark before. It surprises me that the same would happen in dedicated web shops. Sound like bad hires to me.

Our graphic designer -- correction, art director -- does visual design and hands it off to production artists who turn it into HTML using Dreamweaver, or break it into Flash chunks. Want to know how big our art department is, including her? Three people.

Where I work too, there are designers who do mockups (in photoshop) who hand it off to developers to create them in HTML/CSS. They understand HTML enough although to not do bone headed designs that are really convulted to do. It saves me time from having to create it myself.

Converting mockups from "the layout guy" into HTML/CSS was my first non-food-service job in high school, but this was about six years ago, at a small advertising firm that did more print work than web work.

I think the confusion comes from referring to the person who does the mockups as a "web designer." I have yet to meet a person with that title who does not know HTML or CSS. The people who don't get their hands dirty with the coding are usually referred to as just graphic designers.

Argh, yet another controversial 37signals post. What's with these? I think DHH has a narrow view on web design.

If you're handing your HTML/CSS to a "HTML monkey" and they don't get the "it" stuff right (as opposed to the "around" stuff), then they are a BAD HTML/CSS coder. Period.

The baseline HTML/CSS coder, in my mind, should be able to get pixel perfect (or very close to pixel perfect) designs implemented with cross browser compatilibity (at least IE6 and Mozilla).

HTML/CSS coding is in most cases a solved problem. If you have the man power to segment design from the actual implementation, then all the power to you. It'll probably be more efficient that way. Where I work, we don't have that luxury, and we all have to do a bit of everything.

Good background here (in case you missed it)...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208152

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=209991

37signals is not a "graphics" or "design" company. I wonder why they post these kinds of articles. They can basically outsource a bunch of icons and logos then start building from there.

Andddd I'm not clicking 37singals links anymore.

Ah... designers vs. coders link bait.

I wrote up a blog post about it:

http://interfacelab.com/?p=16

In summary, I find 37signals to be full of shit.

37Signals: We do it this way. People who do things differently are wrong.

> People who do things differently are wrong.

They are just stating why they are doing what they are doing. Good information if you want to make use of it.

I appreciate a lot of things about 37signals products. The coding is much more solid than a lot of similar products, and they absolutely know what they're doing.

Their blog posts just come across as a bit partisan and dismissive on a lot of issues. Even when they're making good points, as in this post.

I just don't understand the 37Signals hate. Lots of entities on the internet share their experiences and opinions in a definitive voice, but 37Signals is the one that gets the flak for that approach.

envy

Yeah could we get another 37signals post on HN today? Maybe a few more dups too and I'll be complete.

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