While I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a designer, I do do some design work. I've found that working with designers that can't code is irritating at best. It's not that they're stupid or un-talented. It's really about understanding the medium. It shocks me that so many graphics designers think that they can design for the web without understanding HTML and CSS. That's like saying you can design for print without knowing about different kinds of printing processes. You don't have to be a master, or even proficient, but some familiarity really goes a long way.
The comparison with printing technology is insightful.
The metaphor I like to use: most graphic design students, at one point in their education, come across a printing press that works with movable type. They might spend a day setting a simple poem. It’s dirty, precise, frustrating work. At the end of the day they print their poem, and after they’ve cleaned the press they spot a spelling error…
As tedious as this process might be, a day like this learns you so much about the nature of printing technology that your understanding of your profession really deepens. For me it’s the same with code. The students need to “get their hands dirty” with code to really understand the medium they are going to work in (since most design is for the screen nowadays)… Even if they are not going to code (predominantly) later on in their careers.
I teach interaction design and I’m always amazed by how scared students are of learning about digital technology. It’s a cultural thing really: computers are ‘geeky’, ‘sciency’—not arty, and therefore not their thing.
But when you look at the reality of their practice, designers actually pride themselves in ‘geeky’ details of their craft when they are related to the printing process, knowing about things like spot colors and paper stocks and binding methods.
There is a very simple solution for this problem: functional design in the form of wireframes and descriptions.
Design is communication and interaction. Design consists of functional and graphic design.
When you provide a functional design to a graphic designer you can explain things like: "this will be dynamic text, can be short can be long", "this title can be short, can be long", "this column can contain 1 up to 5 repeating elements", "there has to be a search box somewhere around here", "the main goal is to trigger an subscribe action", "make sure the width of this column is x pixels because there will be a default banner".
