Blurred Development
Thursday July 8, 2010
I have long thought that the line between developer and designer has become blurred. The instances where someone will only design a site are minimal. Today, designers are expected to be comfortable with the front-end; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and developers should be comfortable with the elements of design; typography, proportion and scale, line, balance, etc.. If you are a developer and do not know any elements of design, Digital Web has a good primer from 2005 http://www.digital-web.com/articles/elements_of_design/
I believe in this so much that I helped design a new two year college course that emphasizes web standards and teaches front-end development along side graphic design. It teaches jQuery, advanced CSS (meaning image sprites, CSS3, etc.), some HTML5, MVC concepts, and even version control. Those are all skills that a designer should have. This program is at Davis College and is listed here [PDF file]
The point of my post is to share a link to the best darn podcasters on the net. Dan Benjamin and Jason Seifer do a few podcasts together, and I laugh every time I watch/listen to one of them, but the latest episode of the Dev Show showed me that they share my thoughts on blurred lines in web design. It’s a great show with lots of resources. Check it out.
Episode 14 of The Dev Show - Design for Developers
Also, you can check out Dan and Jason on their two podcasts: