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.

All My Favorite Designers Aren’t Designers

These past couple months in the “real world” have reaffirmed something I have been feeling for a few years now — as much as I love design, I feel myself turning away from the world of graphic design. Four years ago, I was looking up to the likes of Frank Chimero, Oliver Munday, Nick Felton, Jessica Hische, Olly Moss, Mikey Burton, and Curtis Jinkins. I admired them and dreamed of being in their shoes someday. I wanted badly to be an ADC Young Gun or one of the 20 under 30. I believe strongly in design and wanted to be skilled, influential, and recognized in my field.

I have changed a lot since then, unsurprisingly I suppose. Now I find more inspiration in Louis CK’s brilliant, observational comedy than on any of the “design” blogs out there.

Nowadays, a short list of my role models looks very different. Dave Eggers, the force behind the avant garde publishing house McSweeney’s, 826 Valencia, and by association Wholphin, is one of my biggest influences. I admire Jesse Thorn for building a modest podcast empire around content that he wanted to produce, and looking good while doing it. I am inspired by John Bielenberg, who walked away from high–design — everything I was running towards four years ago — to start Project M. Ben Pieratt, the last of my heroes who could still be considered a true designer, says bluntly on his website “I used to be a graphic designer but now I run Svpply.com.”

I am especially enamored with Ben, whose posts in the past have expressed, more eloquently and thoughtfully than I ever could, ideas that had been bouncing around my own head. These four in particular, in chronological order and going back almost a whole year, resonated strongly with me:

• In Praise of Quitting Your Job
• My Design Career is Dead, Long Live my Design Career
• My Job pt. 1 — I Have No Idea What I’m Doing
• Dear Graphic and Web Designers, please understand that there are greater opportunities available to you.

Ben has been through some big changes this year, and it has been fun to follow along. His shift from wonderment to confidence in his newfound career path has been inspiring.

This all leaves me in an interesting situation. I no longer identify with or look up to any “real” graphic designers who are alive and working today (with the exception of Paul Sahre and Milton Glaser, perhaps. Both of whom reside on the fine art side of design, which I have eschewed for years.) I chose not to take a job at a design firm when I graduated. I haven’t taken a significant freelance job in almost a year. Instead, I am working with three of my best friends to build websites and mobile applications. Right now, some for others and some for ourselves, but our goal is to be supported by our own web-based products and services as soon as possible. We are entrepreneurs, and we are working on a number of self-initiated projects that we hope will connect people in meaningful ways and make a difference in the world.

It seems, without trying or really noticing, I am working on “startups” almost full time.

Ever since I first heard the term “startup” I disliked it and didn’t want to identify with it. Every new venture is a “startup”, so the name itself holds very little meaning. Additionally, I always heard the term in relation to venture capitalists, angels, and other investors; I didn’t know anyone that self-identified their project as a startup, until it became fashionable to do so, at least. The whole thing reeks of capitalism. To say you’re building a startup — as opposed to a service, community, website, etc. — implies, at least to me, that your focus is on money. Startups are meant to be sold, traded, and bought by Facebook and stunted in their infancy, as countless Silicon Valley institutions have shown us. I too hope to make a comfortable living from web-based products, but I make an important distinction: I am deeply passionate about all of the businesses I pursue, and the thought of building something merely to fill a niche only to sell it to the highest bidder doesn’t interest me in the least. An unbelievable and burgeoning business, for sure — just not for me.

As I have touched on before, I am drawn to design because of my affection for people. The simple fact of the matter is that the web allows me to reach a wider and more diverse audience than I could ever practically reach in print. I still identify as a designer, and I suspect I always will. Design is how I solve problems, visual and otherwise.

The web is a tremendous well of opportunity and we’ve only skinned the surface; it’s an exciting time to be working. I cannot imagine finding satisfaction in designing anything else.

Redesigned Yet Again

Trust me, I am getting as tired of it as you are, but I have redesigned my website yet again. Not really a stylistic change, but I think I made the work a lot easier to get to and took care of some pretty egregious interaction problems. Though I often worry about how vain it might be, my presence online is important to me; I want my website to be an effective way to see my work as well as a reflection of my personality, work ethic, etc. I have made some hierarchical changes this time around, putting my most time consuming pursuits, Friends of The Web and Folk Goods (more to come on both of those later) at the forefront.

Those who know me will be surprised to find that I have finally moved on from orange as “my color,” though I didn’t venture too far down the spectrum. I have decided to go with yellow this time around for a couple reasons. Orange was a cry for attention, robust and demanding. Sneakers, bicycles, soda cans and sports jerseys, all yelling at you. Yellow, while a chromatic neighbor to orange, has a completely different personality. Yellow is friendly. Yellow is primary and fundamental. Yellow is process — highlighters and sticky notes. My fascination with orange was largely born of a desire to be different. My crush on yellow is founded on what I believe to be more authentic grounds. Also, it is my mom’s favorite color.

The new website also includes some improved typography, served up by Typekit, a service I cannot recommend enough, as well as some photographs of me, past and present, all embarrassing.

I feel like I have said this before, but as I graduate in the next month, I hope to start writing on here more. Writing, not blogging. We’ll see how that goes.

Thank you to all of you out there who care about what I do and continue to follow along. Your encouragement, critique, and feedback means a whole lot.

“The Why Axis” to Bring a Critical Voice to Infographics

We all know there are lots of information graphics out there these days. Hopefully, we also all recognize that not all of these visualizations are well crafted or considered. I have touched on this subject before, calling for a more thorough, critical analysis of the information graphics in the media today. Bryan Connor, friend, colleague, and former roommate, knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, and he has just started a new blog, The Why Axis, examining the various forms of data visualization bombarding our eyes and brains on a daily basis. The modest amount of content he has posted to date already shows how relevant The Why Axis is going to be. Just in 2011, we have experienced a major revolution in Egypt, furthered unrest in the Middle East, and an earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster at Fukushima, ALL covered in the news by information graphics. Bryan provides us with an unbiased voice to help us digest all of this data; a safe haven in a world of politically and emotionally charged info graphics. I expect The Why Axis to be part celebration of successful data viz, part whistleblower on inaccurate and misleading information graphics in the news, and wholely informative and thoughtful.

The Why Axis

Crowdstorms is Live!

After months of hard work, Josh and I have finally launched Crowdstorms, a new online tool that uses the power of words and people’s associations with them to inform the creative process. Registration is on an invite only basis and will likely be for sometime, so if you want in be sure to apply for an invitation here.

For those of you without an invite, we would love some feedback on the top level messaging of the brand, homepage, FAQ, etc.

Love & Utility: Finding Meaning in Matter

After a number of weeks of hard work, I am officially launching a new blog, Love & Utility. The website will document research and inspiration for my upcoming thesis project, and focuses on our unique relationships to special objects in our lives. It is founded on the simple principle that a perfect product is both loved, for its beauty or uniqueness, and actively used. A person’s relationship with an object is built on this consistent and affectionate use.

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I’m a Player.

I have officially joined the ranks of Dribbble (big ups to my boy, Ed Nacional), a community for designers to show and tell what they are working on with small screenshots. I was a bit hesitant at first, but the more I use Dribbble the more I like it, and I plan on utilizing it from here out. There is a strong sense of community (dominated by web designers it seems) and it has already proven itself a valuable venue for feedback on in progress work. Bottom line, if you are interested in seeing all the nitty gritty stuff that I am working on day in and day out, you can follow me on Dribbble if you have an account, or subscribe to the RSS feed of my shots if you don’t.

Added bonus: Dribbble seems to be a breeding ground for the trendiest of the trendy trends in web and graphic design, so I also use it as a system of checks & balances for myself in my never ending sisyphusian battle to speak with a unique voice through my work.

It has also been valuable for me to thoroughly examine and use a web based service that serves the creative crowd, as I am also currently designing one.

One last thought: it seems that successful services have been very intentionally limiting the size or magnitude of their submitted content and using it as a marketing point, Dribbble and Twitter are the two best examples. This seems to me to be related to the idea that limiting oneself in art or design is one of the best ways to get inspired. “Make something beautiful” is much harder than “make a beautiful black and white flyer for a local punk show using only a photocopier”.

Announcing Crowdstorms

Senior year is in full swing and I have a lot of pots on the stove. The time has finally come to start publicizing one of the most exciting projects I have in the works, which is a comprehensive and (hopefully) unique web service that I will be building with my good friend, Josh.

The name of the project is Crowdstorms, and it will be a tool that helps designers, illustrators, writers, and other creatives form and develop ideas. It will use the power of words and people’s unique associations with them to fuel the creative process and encourage unconventional solutions to visual problems. Details are still fuzzy, but the site will allow users to create “topics” and then ask the community to populate them. It will carefully track all of the relationships different people form between words and ideas, building an associative reference tool unlike anything currently available.

I will keep this blog updated with the major news concerning Crowdstorms, but for all the behind the scenes action, check out the development blog Josh and I are maintaining. If you are interested in the private beta, sign up to be notified when it is available.

New Website Up & Running!

After much delay, my new website is finally up and running! Please have a look around, check out the new work, and be sure to shoot me an email if you have any comments or find any bugs. I have some more content to push out later today, so stay tuned.

Examining the “Portfolio Site”

As a young designer, my web presence is an important aspect of my personal branding, my best method of marketing myself, and a strong reflection of the designer I am, or want to be. Since I started putting my work online three years ago, this domain has had six different designs, only three of which I am not completely ashamed of (a good sign I am growing as a designer). Keeping to my unintentionally established six-month website life cycle, I will be redesigning my portfolio and blog for launch sometime in early 2010.

I have been spending the last couple months accumulating bookmarks of portfolio and blog designs that I find to be highly effective, compelling, or interesting for any reason, and I thought I would share my thoughts. These are some of the best websites out there in the portfolio/blogosphere, in my humble opinion.

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