beautiful-sin.net

I had the pleasure, recently, of reading WebsiteToDos.com’s first blog entry, All Your Skillsets Are Belong To Us?, which makes the clear and distinct point that the author feels that graphical design knowledge alone does not an adequate website make - which I whole-heartedly agree with. He has sighted many valid examples of this, and while I’m not opposed to anything said, I do think that, at least on the part of the coding and programming community, graphical design seems to be considered a non valid slice of the design world.

It’s become obvious to me these last few months that, while those who practice valid xhtml coding or can whip up a CMS from scratch in less than a day generally have no clue how to use their graphic editors, they don’t seem to think they need them. Their pitch is usually the same - because they can’t do it or they haven’t had time to learn it, they don’t see a need for it, which annoys me to no end, and I’ll tell you why. Because they expect those of us who started in graphic design to know the ins and outs of coding their websites validly automatically - just because they say so, instead of realizing that everyone who creates websites has learned something different, and all aspects of design are important.

See, I’m still a relative newbie to the whole valid coding thing, even though I’ve been in the graphics game for eight billion years, but I still get flack for the fact that I’m not at 100%, and while I’m all for learning to code your website validly and make sure it’s accessible, I also realize that graphics are a large part of your website, and just writing them off makes that neat sort of sense that makes no sense.

Granted, this rant doesn’t reflect on all of said designers, and it is not what the author of WebsiteToDos.com is saying, he/she seems to understand that web design is more than just graphic design - but that elimination of graphics is quite close to the edge of sanity, lol.

I do agree, though, with what they’re saying here. There is an odd surge, especially in recent years, of graphic designers who can’t wrap their brain around the concept that graphics aren’t all you need for a great website. Granted, it’s crazy to believe that graphic design is all you need in your arsenal, but I would like to stress that there are a vast number of graphically challenged designers who think that graphics far from needed for a decent website, and that’s absolutely untrue. I think, more than anything, I wish that people would realize that, to be an effective, well-rounded web designer, you have to constantly learn in every field of design.

Did you understand any of that? I’m speaking jibberish, aren’t I?