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I fit into the niche skillset described in this article and disagree with this argument in part (I actually attended RISD as a graphic design student during Mae

I fit into the niche skillset described in this article and disagree with this argument in part (I actually attended RISD as a graphic design student during Maeda's somewhat short tenure as president, and now run a small web dev shop). It's not that code literacy is wrong per se, but the assumption that this literacy has to be applied to whatever the core product is that is being produced is suspect. Though it seems more and more true that knowing how to write computer programs (in whatever form) is transformational to the role it is applied to, the common argument that designers should jump into collaboration with front-end developers misses a much larger opportunity. Where are all of the code camps teaching designers to compose books with Racket, or beginner level blog posts for building an image processing pipeline in Ruby? There are tons of inefficient processes (in most industries) that would benefit from the person in that position having the ability to solve a problem by writing a script or program. EDIT: edited for wordiness, spelling

ch4s3 10y ago
Yeah, automating simple image transformations could really save a lot of time and effort.
- jack_jennings 10y ago
  Not sure if this is sarcasm, but I have looked over the shoulder of many designers that spend days doing manual repetitive tasks. Perhaps not so reductive as direct image transforms, but making small variations of a single image, SVG, PDF, etc., certainly.
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    No, I was serious. I'm often surprised that even at my company where the 75% of us are engineers, people are still reticent to spend the time automating repetitive tasks. I have a coworker who manually runs sql queries and compiles an excel doc with the results twice a week. I wrote a script that produces the same results 100% of the tim, and he doesn't use the script.
Alex3917 10y ago
> the assumption that this literacy has to be applied to whatever the core product is that is being produced is suspect. I think what he's saying is that if you're a designer and you don't want to be unemployed then you should learn to code. Whether or not you should actually write code for any given project is a separate question.
- jack_jennings 10y ago
  My read was references to JavaScript (largely a codeword for web development, even if it can now be used in a larger context), and repeated references to building a product (which in context seemed to imply working directly on shipping code). The argument for designers learning web programming skills is more explictly made elsewhere, and I am picking up enough hints of the same here. In the end "you will need to code to do your job" is just not as hot of a statement, because this is broadly true in any industry.
hbosch 10y ago
I too pursue this niche, personally and professionally (SCAD alum here – I have chosen to take my career down a more design-centric path). One of the best products in this space is Framer Studio[0]. Framer has quick visual feedback and added GUI around a specialized flavor of CoffeeScript. Creating a UI, prototyping the UX, exploring the motion design aspects and mirroring to device is all done by blending design sensibilities and very basic coding. This has been an incredibly valuable tool for me, personally. Sometimes I kind of view it the same way I view Google Translate... it won't make you fluent in the language but you can communicate ideas in a quick way. I do not currently see many (if any) design/code tools today that match Framer's accessibility, extensibility, community and quality of output. 0. https://framer.com/ https://framer.com/

ch4s3 10y ago

Yeah, automating simple image transformations could really save a lot of time and effort.

jack_jennings 10y ago
Not sure if this is sarcasm, but I have looked over the shoulder of many designers that spend days doing manual repetitive tasks. Perhaps not so reductive as direct image transforms, but making small variations of a single image, SVG, PDF, etc., certainly.
- ch4s3 10y ago
  No, I was serious. I'm often surprised that even at my company where the 75% of us are engineers, people are still reticent to spend the time automating repetitive tasks. I have a coworker who manually runs sql queries and compiles an excel doc with the results twice a week. I wrote a script that produces the same results 100% of the tim, and he doesn't use the script.

Alex3917 10y ago

> the assumption that this literacy has to be applied to whatever the core product is that is being produced is suspect. I think what he's saying is that if you're a designer and you don't want to be unemployed then you should learn to code. Whether or not you should actually write code for any given project is a separate question.

jack_jennings 10y ago
My read was references to JavaScript (largely a codeword for web development, even if it can now be used in a larger context), and repeated references to building a product (which in context seemed to imply working directly on shipping code). The argument for designers learning web programming skills is more explictly made elsewhere, and I am picking up enough hints of the same here. In the end "you will need to code to do your job" is just not as hot of a statement, because this is broadly true in any industry.

hbosch 10y ago

I too pursue this niche, personally and professionally (SCAD alum here – I have chosen to take my career down a more design-centric path). One of the best products in this space is Framer Studio[0]. Framer has quick visual feedback and added GUI around a specialized flavor of CoffeeScript. Creating a UI, prototyping the UX, exploring the motion design aspects and mirroring to device is all done by blending design sensibilities and very basic coding. This has been an incredibly valuable tool for me, personally. Sometimes I kind of view it the same way I view Google Translate... it won't make you fluent in the language but you can communicate ideas in a quick way. I do not currently see many (if any) design/code tools today that match Framer's accessibility, extensibility, community and quality of output. 0. https://framer.com/ https://framer.com/