Don’t “Learn Code” if You Don’t Want To

A blog post yesterday from the respected Frank Chimero ignited a lively Twitter discussion about the designer’s relationship to code. Some feel strongly that basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is essential for a designer in this day and age; some cling to the idea that a designer’s job is to make things pretty and the nuts and bolts of how that pretty thing is built are of no consequence. I’ve got an answer to settle all the 140-character arguing.

Ready? Here it is:

“Should I learn how to code?”
“If you want to.”

Really, it’s that simple. This question is no different from “Should I learn how to screen print?” or “Should I learn how to bind books?” Basic coding is a skill that will allow a designer to produce something they have designed, which is an immensely rewarding experience, but is in no way essential to the design process. Will knowing HTML and CSS make you a better designer for the web? Maybe a tiny bit, but no more than knowing how to coat, expose, rinse, and pull a screen will make you a better poster designer. We learn about how to design something by using it, not by building it. An avid reader is better suited to lay out a textbook than a bookbinder. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably visit and use dozens of websites today — most of us interact more with screens than printed material on a daily basis. Assuming you’re constantly analyzing the world around you for the basic principles of design (hierarchy, composition, etc.), and you should be if you call yourself a designer, I say you’re all qualified to design for the web.

I know how to develop websites. Once, I even coded a website that accidentally worked perfectly in IE6. However, at Friends of The Web HQ, I am surrounded by far more capable and speedy developers, as any designer working for a decent sized company or studio will be, so I haven’t touched a single line of code since I graduated.

Which reminds me, a real developer doesn’t want your garbage “designer/developer” slashie code anyway. It doesn’t matter how many articles you’ve read on A List Apart or how long you’ve followed Jason Santa Maria on Twitter; your code sucks. But don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Being a good developer and engineer is a full-time job, not a side-dish to your design career.

Yes, there are exceptions. Jonnie Hallman, one of my earliest design role models and now a close friend, is a designer/developer that consistently puts out clean looking, smartly engineered apps and websites. However, I am sure even Jonnie would admit that in order to keep his execution on par with is discerning standards he spends the vast majority of his time and energy wearing his developer hat; design is the cherry on top. Phenoms like Jonnie are the exception, not the rule.

Why this is so important

I am definitely not trying to discourage designers from learning how to code if they want to. Just as Jonnie designs and builds his own apps and Chris Muccioli designs and prints his own beautiful posters, you too can design something and bring it to fruition. I recommend doing it at least once.

However, I think it is dangerous and misleading to say that coding is an essential skill for a designer today. As I have discussed previously, one of the most apparent issues in design education to me right now is the deficient excitement around web and screen based design. The “designers need to know how to code” attitude is largely to blame for this. To some of us, code is meditative, logical, and beautiful. However, to most designers and design students, code is confusing, boring, and frustrating. This will probably never change.

I worry that posts like Frank’s, which perpetuate the myth that you have to know code to design for the web, are pushing students away from screen-based design. The Internet is an exciting and powerful medium and people should be jumping at the chance to design for it, whether they understand code or not.

Besides, breaking the rules is how we get progress. Think wrong.

The Golden Age and Graphic Design

I finally saw Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris this week, and I thought it was wonderful. You all should watch it. As with most Woody Allen films, and good films in general, it left me thinking about a lot of things, not least of which is the idea of the “golden age” and how it pertains to design, specifically design education.

Spoiler Alert.

The movie features contemporary protagonist Gil Pender, a writer that has been successful selling shallow, vapid scripts to big budget Hollywood productions. Though he has been prosperous in all quantitative measures in his career, he longs for the romantic life of an artist and yearns to write a novel set in Paris in the 1920′s, what he considers to be the “golden age.” He discovers if he waits at a certain street corner, when the clock strikes midnight, a vintage Peugeot will pick him up and drive him back through time that he might experience his “golden age,” rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, and T.S. Elliot. He falls for a brooding and curious woman in the 20′s (GASP! An affair in a Woody Allen film?) and ends up travelling with her even further through time to the 1890′s, what she considers to be the “golden age.” The resolution of this four-dimensional scandal is that everyone thinks that some time before theirs was the “golden age” because life is generally unsatisfying, and this is something that we simply cannot accept. Bleak, existential the–grass–is–always–greener.

This is something I have thought about before, and I find it to be generally true. People who work for others always tell me how lucky I am to be self–employed, and entrepreneurs I know wish someone would do their bookkeeping for them and give them a health plan and a 401k. I suspect this dissatisfaction is one of the major forces driving humanity ever forward, a whole species — or at least a whole hemisphere — chasing the carrot–on–a–fishing–line that is contentedness.

I have found this to be especially true of my peers, who all happen to be recent college graduates, most of which are still looking for gainful employment. I have seen first and second hand how important knowledge of basic interactive and web design is to getting a job in design today, and to put it bluntly, schools can’t seem to keep up with the lightning fast evolution of the web. The vast majority of my classmates at MICA, and I suspect students across the country, feel nostalgic for the “golden age” of graphic design. There is boundless passion for letterpress, screen printing, patinated signs, and 60′s logos and branding. People lament the death, or at least realignment, of print and designing for the screen is tiresome and limiting.

Everything is faux distressed or egregiously skeuomorphic. The web is in the throes of puberty; we have all sorts of new and exciting potential, but we’re uncomfortable in our own skin.

Students should and need to be excited about the amazing possibilities afforded by the Internet. As much as I love the tactility of paper, the sound and feel of a Vandercook, the smell of ink, we are not living in the age of print. Your counterfeit vintage poster is easy; your retro typography is irrelevant. Print is not changing the world, Facebook is changing the world, and not necessarily for the better.

May we all learn to not just accept, but love the times we’re living in, against all odds. Eyes on the future, everyone, not the past.