Really, really great piece by Andy on what sort of skills one needs to be a good and employable web designer in the industry today. You’ll note that Andy’s list of skills focuses on understanding the foundations of design as a craft (as well as basic communication, interaction, and business skills needed by a professional in nearly any industry), and not on individual design packages such as Photoshop or Dreamweaver. To that point, this quote at the end is particularly interesting:
…you may find that there are plenty of job listings where the job requirements are described as, “must be expert with Photoshop and Illustrator…” or something long those lines. Ignore those job listings; they’re placed by inept and sick companies looking for decorators, not designers. Take a job with a company asking for a Photoshop expert and I promise you’ll never be allowed to engage in design.
Andy might be over-exaggerating a little bit, here — I wouldn’t say every listing that mentions Photoshop and Illustrator is absolutely a bad gig — but his point is very sound. Such a mention is definitely a red flag. If you’re being hired as a designer, your employer ought to be much more interested in your ability to design than your expertise with a particular software package. And if they are more interested in your expertise with a particular software package, it’s probably because they really want you to be a Photoshop jockey, not a designer. Visit site »
In general, this is a very nice piece by Andy. I agree with most of his assertions. There’s no doubt that many agencies are only concerned with pleasing the client on the surface, rather than figuring out how to best solve that client’s problems and help them reach their business goals. Clients don’t usually know what the need, design-wise, even if they think they do (that’s why they’re hiring a designer, after all). Just giving them what the tell you they want isn’t enough. A good agency will help them figure out what they really need, and convince them to go through with it, even in the case that it doesn’t mesh with what the client initially thought they wanted. Visit site »
Although we never called it “quiet structure,” the design ideas presented here by Andy Rutledge are very much what we (and by we, I mostly mean Nathan were going for with the recent LJWorld.com redesign. The idea was to let the structural elements (grid, borders, boxes, etc.) serve their role as tools for positioning and establishing hierarchy, but also encourage them to fade into the background and let the content bubble up to the front as much as possible.
Andy uses CNN.com’s recent redesign an example of these same concepts.
Nice piece, Andy. Visit site »
A really nice article by Andy Rutledge on contrast and it’s relationship to information hierarchy and meaning. These are really core, central principles o graphics design that you probably already know, but Andy lays them out really nicely.
If I were a jackass, I’d publicly wonder why, if contrast is so important, all text on Andy’s personal site is bold. But I’m not a jackass. :) Visit site »
Andy talks layout, and rips apart the 49news site I worked on in the process. Can’t say I disagree with him much, but I still think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better TV news website. Visit site »
I’ve mentioned this on my blog before. There aren’t enough people talking about design. It’s all about the technical aspects of our industry. I would like to see more design articles, myself. Visit site »