Bridging the Gap
October 2nd, 2009
So, why would I, a graphic designer, want to intern at a web development firm? My answer is this: Design and development should not be mutually exclusive. The web is, by far, the most heavily used medium for communicating, so it seems silly for one profession to avoid (or fear) the other.
Designers need developers to communicate their message online, and developers need designers to give them a message. But what about capabilities? A print designer probably has no idea why it would be tricky to tile a background image and throw a gradient over it, or why they can’t use a typeface other than Verdana or Georgia. Likewise, a coder sees beauty in Monaco–faultlessly tabbed, but it’s doubtful that one would see the beauty in perfect kerning and elegant leading, neither of which can be found in any coded page (they translate, respectively, into “letter-spacing” and “line-height”).
When I started here I had no idea what “W3C” was, much less why it’s important to be compliant with their standards, so It’s been a tremendous help to understand the web from both sides of the equation. I understand that “creatives” thinking code and coders thinking creative can sometimes, in rare cases, cause head trauma, so I recommend exercising caution. But the more these two fields can be integrated, the more streamlined and painless things will become for everyone. That is of course, excluding the dreadful IE6 with all it’s random pitfalls and senseless hurdles.
From my time here at Floodlight, my advice for other students, both graphic designers and developers, is to invest a little time getting to know each others’ profession. It helps a great deal even if you only know the language! If others could share my experience I believe that communication between these two “factions” would no longer be lost in translation.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:26 am
So true, Adam. Blogging and doing low level coding has opened up my mind to not only new design possibilities (knowing the limits can be freeing) but also how important it is to have good programmers to implement it efficiently. Thanks for sharing!