designers versus programmers. in this industry, 99% of the time you are either one or the other. there was no way around it. very rarely do you find that 1% that are perfect at both. but it’s not rare to find those who are pretty good at both. the conversations i have about dealing with designers and dealing with developers always amuse me. contrary to popular belief, dealing with other programmers has been much more reasonable and less difficult than designers.
now i’m not saying that all developers are easygoing and that all designers are a pain. i am saying, however, that designers are a separate breed and have their own flaws and quirks that i would like to confess to all of you.
as a designer, we’re trained to be anal
especially the ones that attended some sort of design school. they were all trained to be anal retentive. if pixels are out of place, fonts aren’t the right tracking or kerning, someone, most likely a professor or another designer, has torn us a new one because of it. it’s like being abused as a child. you become an abusive parent. it’s a repetitive cycle that can’t be avoided. we’re trained to rip you a new one if something about your design isn’t as perfect as we would have hoped.
i may design well, but i don’t have logical answers for everything
as a designer, i thrive on inspiration and based on what inspires me, i simply just tell that a certain color or certain font just feels right. i like this font for this layout. the dark gray mixed with the dark red is what i think represents the underattacker brand well. these decisions are not logical. they were probably derived from some other piece that i saw years ago.
in some sense, designers are paid to express themselves within their medium. my gut instinct is important. designers spend years to trust and hone that instict so that we know on an emotional level what works and what looks right. but unfortunately, we are not perfect. sometimes, our instincts will fail us.
unlike coding, where something either works or doesn’t work, it’s harder to tell what needs to be fixed. sometimes a design you think you just nailed and perfected turns out to be terrible. this is why most designers are on a lot of medication.
everyone thinks they can design
everyone feels they can have an opinion on it. even clients think they are designers, yet they still need to hire me, the designer. when’s the last time a business executive came in and told a developer how the CSS needs to be setup? i get that advice all the time and it makes me cranky. fortunate for me, my clients who think they can “design” are just fooling themselves. in actual reality, if they were truly designers, i would be as broke as a joke.
designers secretly want developers to share ownership in the design
all designers know that if you, the developer, doesn’t code it, it won’t come alive. it’s just the same as how screenwriters depend on actors to make their words really sing off the page. designers depend on developers to make their designs work and because of that, we need you to understand and love the design just as much as we do.
we’re addicts
design is an addictive yet painful act. there’s an infinite amount of possibilities and the only thing that can make the design better is the combination of refinement and iteration. this is the only thing that will get the design finished. changes and fixes are all part of the creative process.
sympathy for the evil designer
the next time a designer is ranting and complaining about how the font is too big or how the checkbox is supposed to trigger this action, hopefully you’ll understand why. designers occupy a weird space in the business world. we care a lot about our designs and we want you developers to care about them as well. we want to be partners with developers and respected by developers. our common ground is that we all want what’s best for the project. with a little compromise and understanding on both sides, that can certainly be the case.
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