First of all this article is written by a “kid” who, although is making decent points, is far too young and inexperienced to make the assertions that he is making.

“Coding, mark-up, programming,” whatever general terminology that you want to use ultimately doesn’t matter here. What dose mater is that “design” and “coding” are two VERY different skill sets. One is left brained and the other right brained. There is not way around that fact. Also, the idea that coders and designers have to be at odds is childish and unprofessional. A talented team is a great team, period. And the digital space is far too large and ever-expanding so as to think that anyone person can master enough to be self-sufficient.

I have yet to meet someone that is great at both. And, just because you rip of the code from sites that you like then alter it slightly (or don’t), dose NOT make you a designer and it certainly doesn’t make you both! In actuality, that is the definition of a “hack”.

As a designer I will happily concede that we need to understand code in at least a basic level and certainly understand which design practices are pro-web and which ones might cause issues in the digital space, and thus avoid them. However, to think that anyone can keep current and be a “pro” at both for life is beyond unreasonable. And, honestly why would you want to?

This article is supporting a trend in the creative services (agency) world, which has gotten WAY out of control. And it is a negative trend for the creatives that work within the industry. It is however beneficial in a superficially financial and short term way for the those on the business side.

The truth is that most agencies are 10+ years behind the times and are still catching up to the web, all while the social networking/app/mobile revolution is in full swing. They are all running to bring in talent that really can’t be at a professional level in most instances as the technologies haven’t been around long enough to be mastered. So there is a lot of perfecting on the job. That is why there are all these job descriptions that were seemingly written by idiots with no real understanding of what they are talking about or what they are ultimately in need of. This is why they want all of us to know as much as possible.

And to Ken’s point. He is quite correct that agencies/companies are all ways finding ways to charge their clients for the salaries/production costs of 10 employees all while employing only a few so that they can pay themselves as much as possible while keeping their costs down. And, for the record, don’t think these type of agencies are going anywhere or will be around for long, because they won’t be. An even worse practice is outsourcing the work to “freelancers”. And all of you who think freelance is such a great thing are ultimately undermining yourselves and the industry in the long run. If you are not charging a B2B cost for your services (and I’m SURE none of you kiddies are) you are enabling the very MBA grads who are decade after decade encroaching on your financial worth and turning you all into “art slaves”. So, make this ridiculous argument now and see what happens in 10 more years where you all have to learn and know even more than what you do today.

There is a bigger picture going on here, lets grow-up and get beyond the bravado. As it really serves no constructive purpose.

Jack of all trades, master of none, indeed.

Specialize. It’s what Jesus would do.

The more skills you have….the better the end result can prove to be. Get stuck in I say all you designers out there, chew on some code and see how it can open many doors to good design, and great functionality.

Using mark-up is simply knowing how to layout your work out properly in it’s medium, the same way you would know this information in any other field of design.

I am a freelance consultant that has been both Creative Director at big agencies and lead developer, and I can tell you that XHTML/CSS is not hard and is a core part of building a good ‘design’ (designing a website is not just about the way it looks…)

Architects know about materials (but of course can’t build), car designers understand aerodynamics (but of course don’t engineer cars) and print designers understand print restrictions (but of course don’t run know the intricacies of being a printer).

Lazy Photoshop only designers need to improve the integrity of our jobs by becoming professional designers. The web is not all visual (for many it’s not at all) and the design process is a lot more complex than just “that looks nice”. Simple.

Yet, 75% of the people out there have no idea what they’re doing.

Either people are much dumber than you think, or HTML/CSS are much more difficult to do well than you think…

These 3 skills I picked up over the years created a 3 legged stool that works well for me as a freelancer, rather than being just a dev, design or usability person.

When I did dev, I was asked to build designs bloated with graphics for TV set-top boxes, and it was a nightmare – just the logo and some copy would blow the 50kb page limit. I kept saying the graphics needed to be smaller, or not photos or it was going to die a horrible death. Sadly the “account manager” would have already taken the designers flat images to the client, and got sign off…..and I “just had to make it work”…. It was less hassle for me to get a new contract…

When I have worked with designers, they can create unusable stuff that takes ages to load or is really cryptic to understand, like icon based navigation, especially if they are print designers not web designers.

I was really lucky and sat next to designers who taught me how not to come up with “bad design”…I wasn’t ever going to be “creative”, but I could be a “clean and crisp” designer. That helps me sketch out a recommendation, even if it’s not marvelous to look at, that could be “pimped up” by a graphic designer.

With usability, usability people design interations that are a nightmare to code – something easy for a human brain can interpret but cost 10s of thousands to turn into a working IT system. If it’s not affordable for the customer, it doesn’t matter how usable it is. I have an idea about cost and times because I was a developer.

My point is you don’t need to be a master of all 3 disciplines, just aware of 2 and specialising in 1.

If you have no awareness of the consequences of your recommendations on the other team members, it gets pretty old pretty quick, unfortunately, and the end product suffers… Sadly I have seen this many times…