tedster - 8:15 am on Jul 31, 2002 (gmt 0)

If a designer with no html/css knowledge designs a site, you might be in trouble

A designer who doesn't know code - I've suffered that one as well.

<rant>
Here's what I don't get. How can any designer or artist NOT take the time to learn something about the qualities of their medium? If architects worked that way our buildings would fall down around us on a daily basis.

Design of any kind is always a trade-off between pure ideal and real world possibility. You want to use that out of gamut color to create a powerful magazine ad? Then the magazine must be willing to use an extra ink color in their production run, and the advertising company must be willing to pay for it.

Does the designer want a beautiful image with a lot of subtle shades of gray, but want to print it on newsprint? Of course, that's ridiculous.

No decent designer would ignore the output medium in their design process - at least in the print world. So why do "pure design" web folks sometimes expect the web to accommodate anything they can put together in Photoshop?

All design requires trade-offs. But more than that, learning something about any medium also OPENS doors. It suggests design possibilities that would never have occurred to a person before they learned about how the medium works.

Textures of various papers suggest charcoal techniques, or the qualities of a ceramic glaze invite new design potentials for a vase.

The web's no different. I think that coders and developers have the RIGHT to ask for give and take with the designer. There should be no gods and goddesses in this process, only a team that needs to create a site that functions well.

</rant>