My career started out in print. Paste the text onto board. Make sure it is straight! Cut the rubylith. Ha, so old of a technic that Word spell check doesn’t even recognize the term! Get it camera ready. What a process that was.
Computers hit the market. We designers had to learn programs… photo editing, page layout, and illustrative ones. On and on it goes. Ah, design layout was so much easier. Instant gratification.
Over the years, I have done quite well. Continued to grow. Going from print to web design. I love web design. It has come along way from the beginning. Every page had to be very boxy. As code progressed, it has freed up designers to do more, achieve more to make a web page more dynamic.
The designer’s role had to grow. Nowadays, UX is the rage. Good architecture is needed to serve up the best possible experience to the user. This is an area of study all in its own. What does that mean. User testing, research, site maps, wireframes, prototypes, more user testing, prototyping programs.
Seems over the years employers want a designer to be “all that and a bag of chips”.
We need to have great UI, that great design eye, be the UX, serve up good architecture, and some want designers also to be coders. Be very skilled in Javascript, CSS, platforms, etc.
As designers can we not specialize our talent. I compare it to doctors needing to know all areas of medicine. For a pediatrician to be a heart surgeon. It just is not so…they specialize.
For me I have knowledge in coding, css but, I am not a coder in todays standards. I can communicate with a skilled coder to get the needs of the client. In that, I ask… Are coders great visual designers? Alot are not, they muddle through it. The coders I have talked to do not want to be designers. Their pages are not as creative as they can be, may look like designs from the 80’s. I say, we designers are greatly needed and somewhat overlooked.
Understood companies want to say the almighty buck. As designers can we not specialize our talent. I compare it to doctors needing to know all areas of medicine. For a pediatrician to be a heart surgeon. It just is not so…they specialize.
I have developed my UX skills to a comfortable point. In working in web design I can see the errors other web pages have made and recognize that the least amount of click to get the information is the optimum thing. With that I can serve up kick ass designs.
My next step find a place to develop more, to get more experience in areas that I need to develop and continue the good design that now possess.
I’ll show you what I am made of. I’m open to opportunities.
In the end I’m a designer, dammit.