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I'm a developer who has spent the better part of the last year engrossing myself in UX and design education. I disagree that designers are inherently perfectio
by netmau5 16y ago
I'm a developer who has spent the better part of the last year engrossing myself in UX and design education. I disagree that designers are inherently perfectionists; that is simply an effect of trying hard to be your best. I have found that being obsessive about making awesome code has transferred quite well to web design.
The "just learn it yourself" camp is being a little delusional if they think you're going to be able to pick up something and do it well. I respect the bootstrappers who are making lemonade out of their lemons, I'm one of them myself, but it takes more than a couple weekends to develop quality skills. Sometimes you should just bite the bullet and delegate where necessary.
I hired an illustrator for one of my recent side-projects because I found it more important to have good work done rather than doing something badly myself and wasting a bunch of time in the process. If the skill is something you will utilize frequently in the future, then it might be worth the up-front cost. But sometimes it's more efficient to raise the money to pay a real pro rather than do it yourself, even as a one-man team. Frugal means not only saving money but also saving time: both need to be considered in the equation.
- robertoryan 16y agoI'd second netmau5's first point. Designers actively refine their craft on the job; especially in startup environments, where one regularly attempts the unknown. Having pride in your work can be the elbow grease that keeps you learning after Photoshop quits. Moreover, consider the position of a designer in a startup. You are often outnumbered by engineers, who can mindmeld to solve really tricky problems; you are responsible for the coltish first days of the company brand; you are the de-facto copy-writer, publicist, and user advocate. You are the weak link in the iteration chain; if you call in sick, there's no one to put lipstick on the pig. Engineers will force you to defend decisions you experienced as intuitions, and there is little expectation that engineers learn your professional vocabulary. (See: for example, the sneering aside the author makes about typographic leading) In response to that pressure, I've learned that it's important to refocus on what the user needs. If most users are newcomers, and the front page has a gigantic bounce rate, then it's time to throw down some dank design work. (If the engineers balk, explain and continue). If most users bounce on the FAQ, maybe its time to think about "vertical rhythm," or typeface choices, or navigation schemes. As long as you're fighting for the user, there's no harm in picking your battles. You're the design professional; make a professional design, and the company succeeds in helping the user.
- gallerytungsten 16y agore: (See: for example, the sneering aside the author makes about typographic leading) That sneering aside illustrates precisely one of my pet peeves. Namely, that the current tools for web typography embody a tremendous leap backwards in ease of use, compared to print design tools. In the print world, it's quite easy to create variations in leading. Contrary to the author's assertion, leading matters a great deal. The current requirements that one write code to achieve sophisticated typography remind me of the terminal-based typesetting machines that were common up until the early 1990s. You entered your text on a green-screen monitor, added codes for size, italics, bold, and so forth, and it came out of a Linotronic machine on photographic paper. After being developed, the paper was pasted into the layout. Hopefully the state of the art in web typography will one day advance beyond technology that was obsolete in the print world some twenty years ago.