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Thread: The Pillars Of Professional Web Design - what makes a pro web designer?
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Thread Status: Active Thread Type: Sticky Thread Total posts in this thread: 34
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ARCdesign
Stranger Joined: Jul 18, 2005 Post Count: 3 Status: Offline |
"When I used Dreamweaver, I always ended up deleting bits in Notepad, or coding by hand because it didn't allow me to place somthing where I wanted. Took longer in the end and is why I only code by hand. Much more browser friendly, and rewarding. I am in control!" This must have been a previous version of dreamweaver the newer versions are not like the old ones. Produce quality code. and I must say that every web designer is either code heavy or design heavy thats just how it is, and you can argue which side is the best way to go about design for days. The point you have though in your "The Pillars Of Professional Web Design" article is true, there are too many "web designers" not doing what they need to do and making everyone look bad. |
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SliderI812
Stranger Joined: Jun 11, 2004 Post Count: 6 Status: Offline |
javascript:smilie('  ')I think what you're saying is true. I think I smell a book on the horizon! But here is the rub for me. When I started in '95 with no formal training I had to code by hand. Ten years later I know that I have forgot more than most newbies know out of college.The term professional has been the traditional domain of the college educated crowd. The Internet has changed that fact. However, the public perception of what a professional is still has some catching up to do. With that said I avoid the term designer. I am not a designer though it is part of the work I do. I am a developer. We develop solutions for our clients by virtue of their sites. Knowing the Pillars, Understanding how each part interconnects and fits with the others and knowing how to employ good design to meet the goals of the project are far beyond the (IMHO) the limited scope of the A typical designer I encounter. We are a small shop, I call us a "Boutique" developer because we only do 6 to 10 projects a year. I know, how do you eat? High quality with real results and lots and lots of in their face personal service. On the note of Service, something we run into a lot is what I call the "Hit & Run" designer. They show some nice fancy flash, they do the song and dance, they throw the content together any old way, take the money, pat the client on the back, wish them luck and are off to the next project with no follow up, no support, no real service. I love this kind of thing. It make selling our services so easy. 90% of our client have had at least one bad experience with web design. We have a higher than 90% client retention rate of three years or more. Knowing your business and delivering good services make the difference.I didn't mean to write a book of my own but there is so much to be said on this topic. As I said in a workshop I conducted recently "good design, content and implementation transcend the cost of the project". No matter the cost, good design (that include all of the Pillars) can and should be expected. There are a couple of very large ad firms in my area that have decided that they are capable of being Website designers. One even states that they are "The upscale website designer". I have seen alot of their work. You know what? It all has the same feel. I can pick one of their sites out of ten. They have virtually no SEO and the usability and over all design of functions just suck. But they are a big Ad agenciey. A large segment of the populous attaches quality with size. This is yet another potential client preconception that has to be overcome. |
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shelfimage
Advanced Member USA Joined: Mar 24, 2005 Post Count: 3000 Status: Offline |
Amen ---------------------------------------- "The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings." -Okakura Kakuzo Save the developers<!> Maine Webworks |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
I too call myself a Developer but more due to my personal deffinition. Web Designer - These tend to come from Grafik design, or are at least talented grafik designers. They see what a web site should look like and make it so. They place important on the look and not the content, forcing the info to fit the design. Web Developer - they tend to come from programming backgrounds or at least are good coders. They tend to see the content of the site, and therefore the structure that presents the content as more important. They create logical intelligent structures that offer the information in first place, then they worry about fitting a visual design to the information in a supporting role. I feel the information, the content it the reason people come and they will come if the site is ugly as long as the content is good. So I structure the content and when I am happy that the content is accessible to all, then I work on the look of the site. Of course it is not that clean cut, i do design a look in Phtotshop early on to have any idea of a structure I need, but I will quickly break away from the original design as needed to present the info. Course I am a strong coder and a so so designer, I am never happy with the design of a site, but I am usually happy with the code. But again that is more my deffinition of designer and developer. designers worry about the look, developers worry about the structure and code. ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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Graeme
Advanced Member Joined: Sep 7, 2003 Post Count: 409 Status: Offline |
Stefan this is an excellent article. I have not been into this forum for a while but I'm pleased I have now. I realy enjoyed the threads as well. May I ask one question though? If I were to follow all this advice and adhere to it, is there any qualifications that qualify you to be a web designer? Many thanks as always Best wishes Graeme |
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admin
Advanced Member Joined: Jun 14, 2003 Post Count: 2933 Status: Offline |
"... is there any qualifications that qualify you to be a web designer?" I'm not sure if I understand your question? If you're asking if I have a certification from some institution, then the answer is no. But the reason why I don't have one, is that my experience goes back before schools were teaching and many haven't even heard of web design. Funny, I have taught many who now teach web design ... I created my first website in 1993-1994 (not sure exactly,) back then there was no such thing as a Frontpage or a Dreamweaver ... heck, framesets just came out after I had built my first few websites. At the risk of sounding arrogant: I think after 11 years of experience, dozens of website (and web application) projects and 7-8 programming languages, I can safely say I am a web designer. ---------------------------------------- Stefan Mischook Video Tutorial Store | Web Templates ---------------------------------------- [Edit 2 times, last edit by admin at Sep 15, 2005 9:33:14 AM] |
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Graeme
Advanced Member Joined: Sep 7, 2003 Post Count: 409 Status: Offline |
Hi Stef, I just wondered if there was a general qualification I could try to get. Best wishes Graeme |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
In 1999 I went through the first class of the first school to teach web design in Berlin. "Web Designer" was not a career, actually my title is "Internet Producer" if you look on my Certificate. German Universities were only teaching any form of web design as a small block in a larger thing like "Multi-media Director" or such. Web-Designer is now the default title, but it is still not a "Aknowledged Career " in Germany. The title "Security Officer", per say security Guard has only been a acknowledged career since 1999. But i do have a piece of paper that says I am a Corporate Security Agent and a Web Internet producer and a Web Programmer (ok, 3 papers). I ca hold my own with many designers in this field, but I would not look a Secret Service Agent for the president in the Eye and say I am as good as he is. So paper is only paper, experiance is what counts. ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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admin
Advanced Member Joined: Jun 14, 2003 Post Count: 2933 Status: Offline |
I have been (slowly) working on something here at Killersites - we've had many request for certification exams. But I still think in the end, a strong portfolio is the key - that means you should build lots of websites. - - That being said, I am putting together a whole new system (for lack of better words,) that constitutes the 'whole package' of a web designers skill sets - this goes beyond the foundation that I detailed in the Pillars. I firmly believe that those who adopt these skills, tools and principles will be 'ahead of the curve', as they say. More on this very soon. ---------------------------------------- Stefan Mischook Video Tutorial Store | Web Templates ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by admin at Sep 15, 2005 10:18:33 AM] |
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shockwave
Newbie Joined: Sep 26, 2005 Post Count: 28 Status: Offline |
@tpattison: Photoshop to blame for sliced images A little history: Actually slicing images startd happening before any programs (including Photoshop,) offered it. Believe or not, we used to do it manually! We would use guidelines to mark-off the 'slices' and then manually selected each 'slice' (with the help of the guidelines) with the selection tool and would copy that portion of the image into a new Photoshop file. We would then save that portion of the image as a GIF or JPEG depending on what was the better option. You would laugh, yes you will, i did it the old handmade way. I 'slice' my images always without any tools. I offen 'feel' my images when i cut them. And feel errors or miss colored aereas when i cut them out. I need this. Anyway, we would repeat that process until we had disassembled the image completely. The next step was to jump into the HTML and manually reassemble the image using a table by dropping in each piece of the puzzle, if you know what I mean.  Before programs like Photoshop came out with it's 'slice image' feature, it was a lot of work! I remember when the first plug-ins came out to do this sort of thing - it was a huge time saver! Thats right, it can safe you a lot of time and work. But I feel tricky when I cut them only by hand. Is it crazy? I don't think so. I try to safe time in other ways. Perhaps this is wrong. I'm offen in trouble with my time tabs for the customers bill. yeep.  ---------------------------------------- shockwave keep on rockin in a free world http://www.zwior.de |
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