One of the things that new photographers struggle against, and one of the things I hate explaining, is the concept that anyone can take a photograph. As a young photographer trying to find clients, one of the comments that people get over and over again is “why should I hire you when my cousin/uncle/grandfather/teenage son/pet dog takes photos and has a very nice camera, why should I let you photograph my wedding/party/etc”. (you get the idea)
However, just because someone bought a $1000 camera and can take some relatively “nice” landscape photos does not in anyway make them a professional portrait photographer. Thankfully, society is starting to wake up and realize this fact.The same holds true for web design. I don’t know how many people, when I tell them that I am a web developer, immediately turn around and tell me that their teenage son/sister/mother does that as well using something called Frontpage. It gets even worse when I find out that they make money creating corporate websites for clients. Now don’t get me wrong, I am in no way trying to put down the talents of these amateurs or beginners or discourage then from learning the art of web design, I am merely trying to state that there is a difference between someone who is learning web design and a professional web developer who’s life it is designing accessible, intuitive, inviting, information rich web experiences.
Web development is far more than merely placing images and text together in an interesting way within the confines of todays browsers. It is understanding the needs of both the client and the user along with the business model, client base, information structure, design aesthetics, accessibility goals and needs, and the ability to put all these components together into what becomes an intuitive, accessible, beautiful, working website that fulfills both the business needs of the client, but also meets the demands of increasingly web savvy users. This is not an easy thing to learn or to accomplish, even for professionals.
On to many forums I find people posting their designs for comment and then getting ticked when the comments are not praise or completely in line with the views of the designer. I also find far too many people posting designs that consist of one page of images with some navigation tacked onto one side and no content. A web design is the sum of its parts; and those parts consist of images, content, navigation, and any other elements that the structure of the overall site demand. It is similar to painting a landscape and once the sky is completed expecting people to praise your handiwork.
A web design is the sum of all its parts and is, therefore, never fully realized until all those parts are in place. Just like a painter would never show his audience his masterpiece until it is fully realized a web designer should not ask for comments on a design until it is fully realized. Here I must make a distinction though, fully realized does not mean fully implemented. Fully realized may be a complete sketch of the home page drawn on a paper napkin, laid out in Photoshop or Illustrator, or mostly implemented as a working html page. The key concept here is that the design is complete. All its parts are in place. The navigation represents the overall information hierarchy of the website, the content is fully developed enough to show what the page will look like when the real content is in place, and all the images are placed on the page in relation to the final design. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a design is not fully realized until it is able to encompass the majority of the website. If the homepage has a slightly different design from internal pages then both pages should be designed.
For the professional web developer, the above paragraph is self evident. Just as a graphic designer would not show a client an advertising idea before it is fully designed, a professional web developer would not go to a client before his/her web design was fully realized. This is just one example among many that sets the pro apart from the beginner in this field. There are many others.
Societies view of photographers has matured greatly over the past hundred years, hopefully society will also begin to see the distinction when it comes to web development. When you pay a beginner to design you website for you, you get a pretty web page. When you invest in a professional, you get a functional, accessible, cross platform/browser, professionally laid out, intelligent transfer of your business to the web.