What is a designer? Where do they work? Are they the person who decides everything about the cool new application, or just the person who makes the icons, or somewhere in between?

Everyone should know everything. But they don’t, and we muddle along anyway. The next best is to know the things that help us to do a good job (and sometimes they are technical, and sometimes they are other people, and often they are our own limitations).

So given the amazing trawl, I’d say the comment is most successful as bait (studying the ends to determine the nature of the means makes more sense after a doblete).

let me provide a viewpoint, which i am willing to accept could be absolutely narrow-minded and wrong. i think that to a certain point everyone should be a generalist. to support i am going to pull a quote from a very abstract source, “Autobiography of a Yogi”, a “spiritual classic”. the reason i pull in this source is as an example of the thought behind why one should adopt generalism to a certain degree. it is a quote from a speech made at the dedication ceremony of Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose’s science institute in India.

“‘I dedicate today this Institute as not merely a laboratory but a temple.’ His reverent solemnity stole like an unseen cloak over the crowded auditorium. ‘In the pursuit of my investigations I was unconsciously led into the border region of physics and physiology. To my amazement, I found boundary lines vanishing and points of contact emerging, between the realms of the living and the non-living. Inorganic matter was perceived as anything but inert; it was athrill under the action of multitudinous forces. A universal reaction seemed to bring metal, plant, and animal under a common law. They all exhibited essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, with possibilities of recovery and exaltation, as well as the permanent unresponsiveness associated with death. Filled with awe at this stupendous generalization, it was with great hope that i announced my results before the Royal Society–results demonstrated by experiments. But the physiologists present advised me to confine myself to investigations in physics, in which my success had been assured, rather than to encroach on their preserves. I had unwittingly strayed into the domain of an unfamiliar caste system and had offended its etiquette.’ pg. 66

that is a rather long quote, but i’d like to pull some very important points out of it, and close this unduly long response. one discipline of any task, say design in website development firm, cannot exist but for the others. with understanding, and in-depth understanding at that, of the interconnected fields, any person can more successfully accomplish his task. i point out Isaac Newton, long considered father of modern physics, spent more time on interpreting the bible than on physics. Da Vinci, the jack-of-all-trades, was far ahead of his time dreaming up inventions that would not come to the forefront for another 400 years. it is then, not fair certainly to expect any desginer or developer to understand the other’s trade. but for one who is pushing himself forward as “the best” for a task, for one who is trying to barter his skills, is it fair for him to deceive his customer when he has not gone the extra mile to educate himself or herself? if there is more you can do to become better at what you do, then why not pursue it… this is the only point i am trying to make. we all long for happy lives, filled with work that we love and enjoy; if we will not work to earn that right can we ever achieve the perfection of our childhood dreams?

to close i do not expect any designer to know code, or any developer to know design. but i do expect that a designer or developer who wants to improve will realize the contact points between the two fields and educate themselves. there are hundreds of sites willing to help teach web development, who freely share the code that makes them good at what they do. there are hundreds of sites out there that are willing and whose mission it is to teach graphic design, typographic design, etc. to the wave of web developers. on the brink of 2010, why not avail ourselves of those resources?

ps never meant to sound angry in my earlier comment directed towards molly, i sincerely apologize for that. only respect and admiration from my side for your work

Molly, I am not sure how deep your German (or swiss or austrian!?!) roots go, but in germany you would pronounce your name more like “wholS shlag”, with a sharp “s” on the “wholS” ^-^
(that said from a german ^-^)

on the other issue: I believe for designers its good to understand that front-end devs / programmers will take their work to reality and that programmers / coders will need to remember that a good design, a good ui is also functional in an asthetic sense.

I want to understand (wishful thinking ^-^) as to say: “Real web designers write MARKUP. Always have, always will.”

My personal approach is:

1. get to understand what kind of site will come –> code / interactivity planning
2. get a sketch on paper –> design planning
3. get the structure it into code and paralell design in PS —> for me that evolves together. of cause this also depends on the freedom given by the contractor.

that does not necessarily make me a good designer / coder, but I its a working approach to work alone or in a team.

I apologize for missing the most important point, Kyle, Jeff. Shame on me!

Okay, everyone, here’s how you do it. Put your mouth into the shape of an O.

READY?

Now say:

Whole . . . shlag.

Do not say half. Do not say shag. It’s a whole shlag.

Now that we’ve addressed that, please just call me Molly, mols, mol or mollydotcom

@stelt – I just had breakfast here in Prague with my Opera colleague David Storey who filled me in on SVGOpen – it sounds really exciting and I’m very happy to know that Microsoft was in da house. Apparently, they have one of the folks from the old Visio team (which had SVG output years ago). For the day to day design guy and gal, SVG is not an immediate option, but it’s use is, as you suggest, far more widespread than we think. One look at Wikipedia will prove that.

We live in interesting times.

- the popular-with-designers Inkscape has already improved quite a bit on the coder-friendliness of its SVG output
- svg-edit might soon show up on Wikipedia to edit its huge SVG collection

- SVG is a great opportunity for cooperation between coders and clickers
- Much SVG content is generated

Seriously, Molly, thanks for taking the time to elaborate your position. It’s really insightful.

A real web designer is simply a person that gets paid to do it. If you can create visual designs, meh, OK. If you provide html/css afterwards, good. Is it semantic, accessible, with some JS? awesome.

I’m guessing you won’t be working at Happy Cog if you don’t know code (wonder what Zeldman defines as “code”) and I, for one, wouldn’t hire you either, but maybe others would. Good luck.

To me, the statement that “real web designers write code” is kind of like saying “real print designers write their own copy and also run their own presses.” It’s ridiculous.

There does need to be consistent and thorough communication between the designers and the developers to make sure that nothing is being sent out in comps that’s just not possible. That being said, I am a firm believer that very few things are actually impossible on the Web, today, it’s just that some things are more difficult than others. Therefore, I wouldn’t really classify it as “possible” or “impossible,” I would classify it more as “does it make sense and will it be accessible or not?”

The bottom line is, to be a truly outstanding developer, you have to use one side of your brain. To be a truly outstanding designer, you have to use the other half of your brain. There are very few people (are there any?) that can actively and effectively use both sides of their brains. Either you’re analytical or you are artistic. There are, certainly, exceptions to every rule. There are great designers that have also become fantastically talented developers, and there are phenomenal developers that are extremely good at design. However, much more often than not, a good developer will be able to tell (by looking at the original source) when a site was coded by a designer and a good designer will be able to tell (just by looking at the page) when a page or app has been designed by a developer. There are nuances that are always going to be separate between the two worlds.

Therefore, rather than saying “real web designers write code,” I think the statement should have been “real web designers work collaboratively with real web developers.”

Just my two cents, and I don’t know anything anyway.