Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
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Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
1–10 of 30 posts
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#2A bigger problem (for developers and designers) is when people don't realise there's a difference between "Client" and "Designer".
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#3If you do client work, you gotta be prepared for these questions and more.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#4I always say "designers make the site pretty, developers make the site do things". Granted, this still earns me a look of befuddlement, but it's the easiest explanation I can come up with.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#5I always say "designers make the site pretty, developers make the site do things". Granted, this still earns me a look of befuddlement, but it's the easiest explanation I can come up with.
Actually, I'd say that a proper designer actually designs how your site should work. Developers implement, hack, do backend stuff, etc.
"Making a site pretty" is what too many coders think they need a designer for at the end of their projects ("skin my app!"), when perhaps they should be working with real designers from the get-go.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#6I always say "designers make the site pretty, developers make the site do things". Granted, this still earns me a look of befuddlement, but it's the easiest explanation I can come up with.
Actually, I'd say that a proper designer actually designs how your site should work. Developers implement, hack, do backend stuff, etc. "Making a site pretty" is what too many coders think they need a designer for at the end of their projects ("skin my app!"), when perhaps they should be working with real designers from the get-go.
I think you're describing a user interface engineer with a design background.
There is definitely a place for "Person who makes pretty". There is a place for "Person who makes it work well from a human computer interaction persepctive".
No reason for it to be the same person.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#7I always say "designers make the site pretty, developers make the site do things". Granted, this still earns me a look of befuddlement, but it's the easiest explanation I can come up with.
Design is not all about making things pretty. It's also about making things usable.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I'd say that a proper designer actually designs how your site should work. Developers implement, hack, do backend stuff, etc. "Making a site pretty" is what too many coders think they need a designer for at the end of their projects ("skin my app!"), when perhaps they should be working with real designers from the get-go.
I think you're describing a user interface engineer with a design background. There is definitely a place for "Person who makes pretty". There is a place for "Person who makes it work well from a human computer interaction persepctive". No reason for it to be the same person.
Agreed. In reality, many developers have plenty of design experience & skill as well.
I like to separate design from pure art, subscribing to the Steve Jobs "design is how it works" mentality. To me, design is as much an engineering discipline as an aesthetic one.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#9I always say "designers make the site pretty, developers make the site do things". Granted, this still earns me a look of befuddlement, but it's the easiest explanation I can come up with.
Actually, I'd say that a proper designer actually designs how your site should work. Developers implement, hack, do backend stuff, etc. "Making a site pretty" is what too many coders think they need a designer for at the end of their projects ("skin my app!"), when perhaps they should be working with real designers from the get-go.
If they don't know the difference between a designer and a developer, it's much better to start small. Chances are, the other person was only asking to be polite and doesn't really want to know about all the nuances in designers' (or developers') jobs. If they do want to know, I'm happy to go into more detail.
Re: Is there a difference between Developer & Designer?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're describing a user interface engineer with a design background. There is definitely a place for "Person who makes pretty". There is a place for "Person who makes it work well from a human computer interaction persepctive". No reason for it to be the same person.
Agreed. In reality, many developers have plenty of design experience & skill as well. I like to separate design from pure art, subscribing to the Steve Jobs "design is how it works" mentality. To me, design is as much an engineering discipline as an aesthetic one.
While that is a good definition for the word design, the people who make software pretty usually have an art background where at best they specialize in layout (as a subset of spacing, etc), not user interaction design or industrial design degree. That degree is a thing all to it's own, and what much of the Apple aesthetic comes from. An industrial design degree is actually closer to architecture than art in many programs.
There is actual training required to be good at real design for most people. I'm saying most "designers" actually have art training. They might do the job you talk about, and want to do, but they're not the ones trained in it, and not necessarily any more apt at it than the programmer or janitor.
Some are quite talented at it. Some aren't. But that doesn't mean their wonderful art isn't incredibly awesome, even though they don't know program flow very well at all.
All this isn't saying there can't be tremendous variation in what a person can learn on their own, mind you, but many people do considerably better in something they have a formal background in.