Published on | 12/27/2011 | by Rob Watts
The Great Graphic vs. Web Design Showdown
Web designers do HTML and CSS
Recently I've read a few articles, posts, discussions, and rants about the skills required to be a web designer. I'm here to set the record straight, so let's just get down to it.
Web designers know HTML. And CSS.
If you don't know the difference between a UL and an OL, a TD and a TR, or a DIV and a SPAN, I hate to break it to you, but you aren't a web designer. If you use Dreamweaver you still aren't a web designer — and especially not if the little “Code” and “Split” buttons make you break out in a cold sweat.
“But Rob,” you say, “I live in Photoshop and turn out stunning digital imagery that makes Mike Tyson weep like a little girl!” I say, wow, Mike Tyson, for real? That's crazy impressive! You're clearly a great graphic designer. I don't care if you once designed a business card that made J. Jonah Jameson cough out his cigar in a paroxysm of giddiness. That would make you one heck of a print designer, but certainly doesn't make you a web designer.
Know Your Medium
Let's just take a print designer as an example. A good print designer will know the difference between kerning and tracking. She will also know when to use rich black and plain black, points and picas, RGB and CMYK. Pantone colors? No problem. Coated paper, spot gloss, perfing, scoring, stitching, binding, process color, line art, halftones, color separations... oh my!
A blend of art and tech
Credit: Rob Watts
Henri Matisse said, “A large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium.” Why should web design be any different? If you are a graphic designer looking to apply your creativity to the web, you will need to learn everything you can about your medium. You might be astounded at the new capabilities and opportunities it presents.
That means taking a bit of time to learn and understand what makes the web, well, the web. It means understanding what is possible so that you can stretch those boundaries without breaking them.
Every discipline, from architecture through zoology, requires creativity to truly excel. But it is that creativity combined with a fundamental understanding of the underlying principles that separates the master from the pretender.
In the case of web design, proficiency in your design programs alone is not enough. Your designs need to be informed by an understanding of how they will be implemented within the limits and capabilities of your medium.
The Web as a Medium
You spilled your lorem ipsum
The underlying canvas, if you will, of the web is the web browser. Unlike most other media, however, the web is highly fluid, and therein lies its challenges. A painting is static; ideally it will look the same ten years from now as it does today. Not so with the web. Not only are browsers evolving and changing, but the page itself will be rendered in many different ways. It may be read out as audio by a screen reader, it may be presented on a mobile device with a tiny screen, or the default font size may need to be larger to accomodate a valued visitor with a sight disability. You may be designing for a CMS and have very little control over the actual content that will be typed into a particular container.
This inherent fluidity is something that most graphic and print designers simply don't take into account. But when you actually dive into the markup just a bit you realize that every block level element is naturally fluid by default, and designing in a way that utilizes this fluidity quickly becomes second nature.
But HTML is Left Brained. I'm Creative!
I can understand this, and I recognize that creativity is absolutely key to success as a designer (or a programmer, if you can believe it). But that creativity needs to be constrained to the realm of possibilities.
Historically speaking, I know that HTML and CSS have been a bit of a bear to truly master. The main culprit for this is the wide disparity between how different browsers would render the markup. Internet Explorer 6 single-handedly held the web back by nearly a decade as web designers wasted away in front of their monitors flailing futilely at their keyboards. Marriages failed, suicides were rampant, and ocean levels were rising. But web standards finally won the day, marriages were saved, and life was filled with rainbows and unicorns. Ocean levels are still rising of course, but the point is that web design is looking forward instead of cowering miserably beneath the brutish giant that was IE 6.
Sorry, I digressed there for a minute. Let's just say that learning standard web design is easier now than it used to be. Believe me, if you can master Photoshop actions and Illustrator paths, HTML and CSS are a breeze.
Finally, writing native HTML and CSS is not programming. It's markup. You don't need to be a computer science major to understand it.
Getting Started with HTML and CSS
We've been doing a few classes on getting going with HTML and CSS, and in the coming weeks we'll be posting them up to this blog. In the meantime, there are lots of HTML tutorials out there, so take a bit of time to learn the basics. You won't regret it!
Rob Watts is a physicist, engineer, and entrepreneur who grew up in a print shop. His mom owned a phototypesetting and graphic design company before it was scuttled by desktop publishing, and his dad ran an offset printing house. While studying at Cornell University he worked at Fine Line Printing in Ithaca, NY, doing prepress, darkroom, and bindery work. The fumes may explain a few things.
