Things I Learned Designing at Disqus • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#41

Post by lominming » Tue, May 13, 2014, 7:24 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

I agree with pretty much everything, except designers using Git. Sadly, Git doesn't work for PSD files properly. Some of the PSD files I've worked with before (900mb+) for larger websites and applications would definitely not be a good fit for Git. Although I think the blame lies mostly on Photoshop's end not being the right tool for web design, but being used by designers anyway. I think whatever tool ends up replac…

In my experience as both a designer and a developer, Git is not the right tool for most designers. Technically, Git is not ideal for binary files. When the file size is too large, Git fails badly. Git works well for text files, not binary files.

Many designers who do not code at all do not understand the workflow of Git. The process of pull, commit, push is extremely confusing. E.g. One large company that forces all designers to use Git ended up with multiple files with slightly different names in the repo system. Designers do not understand the concept of merge conflict and will just rename the file so that they can push to the repo. Case in point: the mental model of Git has worked well for developers, but does not translate well to non-coders.

Overall, I think a version control system for designers should be transparent, non-intrusive, and just works. Designers should not have to worry about when to push or pull, should not have to worry when to commit. I think it should just backup every saves and then subsequently allow them to flag specific design iterations that they want to highlight.

Disclaimer: I am co-founder of Pixelapse - Version Control for Designers.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#42

Post by lominming » Tue, May 13, 2014, 7:28 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #15

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

I agree with pretty much everything, except designers using Git. Sadly, Git doesn't work for PSD files properly. Some of the PSD files I've worked with before (900mb+) for larger websites and applications would definitely not be a good fit for Git. Although I think the blame lies mostly on Photoshop's end not being the right tool for web design, but being used by designers anyway. I think whatever tool ends up replac…

I'm not a designer, so please enlighten me. What kind of data can be held in a single image for a PSD to be 900 megabytes? Is it a single PSD for hundreds of web pages or?

Usually layers itself do not make a PSD big. A big PSD file is usually because the DPI is huge and >500mb PSD files are very common in the print industry where designers have typically design between 300 to 600 dpi. A B2 poster at 600dpi will easily be >500mb.

*A PSD file has a max height and width of 30,000 pixels, and a length limit of 3 Gigabytes. Hence, Photoshop created PSB filetype which supports max height and width of 300,000 pixels and the length limit to around 4 Exabytes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop#File_format

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#43

Post by sanderjd » Tue, May 13, 2014, 10:23 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

I agree with pretty much everything, except designers using Git. Sadly, Git doesn't work for PSD files properly. Some of the PSD files I've worked with before (900mb+) for larger websites and applications would definitely not be a good fit for Git. Although I think the blame lies mostly on Photoshop's end not being the right tool for web design, but being used by designers anyway. I think whatever tool ends up replac…

> I think it is important for design/dev to have a mutual understanding of one another, but I don't think you can truly be a great designer and great developer in one. Having an understanding of the other perspective is important. You'll never meet a surgeon who specialises in brain and heart surgery, why should design and development be any different?

What is the definition of "developer" here? Does it include HTML and CSS? I love working with designers who can translate their designs into actual layout and styling because it seems a lot closer to what they're good at than it is to what I'm good at. It seems like there's quite a bit of gray area in these definitions, but building front-end application behavior seems to flex similar muscles as building back-end application behavior, while tweaking CSS seems to flex similar muscles as tweaking element widths in photoshop. I'm genuinely curious what the common designer point of view is on this!