I feel that if you are a web designer you should know at least the basics of html and css in order to build what you’ve designed. This way, you fundamentally understand how a site is built from the ground up and can appreciate the inner workings of front end design. I’ve had arguments that go both ways, and they usually end up with someone feeling insulted.

Personally, I take a front end design path when creating a new website. Firstly, I create the brand and two versions in photoshop – the desktop and the mobile versions. I then start coding my framework and css and begin sending my clients the progress. I let them know it is a work in progress and they understand, barring I explain in detail why something hasn’t been implemented yet. I find it incredibly arduous to create multiple photoshop documents for one site and often hear designers complain about such a task. Smart objects were introduced a few Photoshop versions ago and should be used in everyone’s daily workflow. Despite some shortcomings, they make reusing assets within one document incredibly easy and efficient.

When I say that all designers should know how to build the site they design, I come from when I was looking into becoming an architect. I thought being an architect back in my naive days was just to draw fancy looking buildings, and then have them magically appear. What I learned was that architects are basically artistic engineers, and they need to know the physics and math in order to design something that won’t kill everyone inside OR defy the laws of physics. My point is that they understand the medium they are designing for and understand what makes things tick.

This line of thinking can relate to front end developers with no skills in design. Often my designs are not cut out right, and look quite different to what I mocked up in photoshop. Someone recently said to me that it’s very uncommon for a final design to look identical to photoshop in a browser. I disagree in that I hope that front end developers use those mockups as a perfect representation of what should be on the final screen. If front end developers learn how to properly dissect a psd file, I believe our woes will dwindle, and; most importantly  our sites will look great when multiple people are working on them.

We all need to take steps to learn one anothers crafts in order to have the best of design and code out there.