might seem like a jack of all trades because I do print design, type design, lettering, and illustration, but really I’m a specialist. I specialize in drawing type and illustration. This is what I’m best at and is probably why you found my website in the first place. I find it strange that I get so many requests for web design—I went to school for graphic design, yes, but each subfield of graphic design has its own set of problems, limitations, and guidelines.
Just as you wouldn’t expect any random person that owns Adobe illustrator to be able to draw a decorative initial from scratch, you can’t expect any print designer to be able to really and truly design for web. Web design is not print design, it is so much more complex. With book design, a person that encounters your book knows how to view it. They look at the cover, they open the cover, and page by page they work their way to the end. With web design, it’s (for the most part) not linear. You have to understand how people are going to use the site (and how people use the web changes all the time).
Not all web designers can code their own websites, but you do need to know what others are capable of doing. I believe all web designers should be able to do basic front end coding (html and css) because so much of the design process can happen at that stage. Also, unless your website is INCREDIBLY image heavy (like all of your navigation is image and much of your content is image) it just MAKES SENSE to do some designing in the browser as it is so much easier to make universal changes and move things around and see them (almost) exactly how others will. I feel like not being able to do basic coding is like being a print designer that never sees proofs before things go to press. You can wait and make the changes later, but its just so much easier (and less expensive) to make things perfect before you send them off to someone else to “print”.
Another reason why web design should be left to the professionals is because web design is almost always a collaborative process. If you are a web designer, chances are you know developers of different skill levels and price ranges that will work well for different projects. Most print designers probably have a friend or two that knows html and can edit the heck out of blog css but very few have close relationships with back end developers, people that know javascript very well, etc. It makes sense to hire someone that has the means to get your website made all lined up and ready to go. They’ll know how much the developing will cost, how long it will take, how to make a site that can easily be passed on to a client so you don’t have to “maintain” it for them. I’ve seen so many people struggle with web design, not because they couldn’t put a .psd file together to hand off, but because their developers were fucking up because they had to hire whoever they could get to work for $1000 because that’s all the clients budget allowed.
The most common argument I get from clients that want web design is “But I just need you to do the .psd file designs, I have a developer friend that will put them together for me.” This is fine. If I wasn’t so completely picky and insane this would be great, but to me I see it like this: If you designed a tattoo for yourself, spent months thinking about it and drawing it, would you take it to your cousin’s friend that bought a tattoo gun on ebay because he calls himself a tattoo artist now? Probably not. How do I know that your developer will put things together right? I’ve never worked with him before. I’m not in contact with him, you are. Developers and designers need to be able to work together from the beginning of the project to the end of the project to make a site perfect.
Anyway, to conclude a fairly long rant: Hire people that are best at what they do. It’s not that I (or other print designers) CAN’T do web design, its that you should want to hire someone that will do it best—someone that knows the ins and outs of the web and can then hire people like me to do what they do best: draw ornaments, logos, illustrations etc that will make the site sing.
