Are Web Designers Becoming Obsolete?
February 04, 2004 | 
20 Comments
Before you get your panties in a bunch, I don’t really think that, I’m just askin’.
I do think it’s a valid question. As the Web evolves and new products, techniques and technologies emerge it seems like Web design as a field is becoming more broad and less what it used to be. Almost to the point where it’s no longer “Web design” anymore.
I know in my daily job I spend much less time designing as I do managing, implementing, planning, architecting and enhancing. It’s not to say there is a lack of creative thought, it’s just that the focus seems to be shifted away from “design.”
It’s like much of the Web has moved passed the prototype. It’s no longer a proof of concept. The design has been finalized and now we’re working on how to improve it. We’re well into implementation. Maybe.
Newer technologies like RSS and the advent of news readers have a profound effect on the way informational and content driven sites are built. I still think front end design is very important, but there is much more to it now. I see the hits from news readers on a steady rise and that forces me to look at the content of my site and how it’s organized and implemented in a way I’d never thought I would.
Add to that the maturation of WYSIWG programs and CMSs, and the effect RIAs and other “Web replacement” technologies like Microsoft’s SharePoint have on the world of traditional Web design and you have to wonder where the Web designer fits it.
I could foresee a day in the not to distant future when our lovely designed Movable Type intranet is completely replaced by some kind of Web enabled application that’s integrated with Office and every desktop across the organization. Sharepoint? Portal Server?
This isn’t the first time that’s crossed my mind. It’s just I’m starting to see the sprouts pop up around from the seeds of this sown months ago. It’s not a bad thing, just different.
The Web is at a crossroads. But then again, it’s always at a crossroads. I don’t think Web designers are going anywhere, but I do think what made a successful Web designer 3, or maybe even 2 years ago, is quite a bit different to what makes a successful Web designer today.
I hate to discuss semantics and job titles, but I can’t help but wonder if the term “Web designer” is even relevant to what most professional people who use that job title do anymore.
I know for me it’s becoming more and more obsolete.
Filed under: Web Design
Comments
1. Philip said:
I feel a Web Designer is someone you need around once a year for a month. A Content Manager, now this is someone you need…all the time. Combine this with Web Designer and you have the perfect employee.
Posted on February 4, 2004 01:23 PM | #
2. Matt said:
Well, Philip pretty much said what I was going to say. Web designers, to me, are already obsolete. To be successful as a designer, you need to be able to at least write simple PHP/SQL/Perl apps, understand a little bit about servers and security, know how to setup and use a CMS, and any other host of small jobs that a client might need you to perform.
Most of the work I’ve had coming in recently has been through older clients that wanted some kind of added functionality on their site. They came back to me because I was their “internet guy”. If I didn’t know how to code up the database and PHP that they needed for this project, they would have gone somewhere else, and likely would have stuck with that guy (or firm). I keep my clients happy by being versatile, and not pigeonholing myself to CSS/XHTML.
I’m not saying that having expertise in user interface design is a bad thing. But I think that in order to make any money in this business, you have to be an “internet guy”, not a designer. A client has to know that it he/she can go to you and get any sort of work done that he/she needs. Otherwise, unless you are one of the top new media designers, and you have a portfolio full of impressive projects, you are kind of dead in the water.
Posted on February 4, 2004 02:12 PM | #
3. Patrick H. Lauke said:
well, this pretty much reflects my thoughts over the past few months (ok, maybe the fact that i’ve been pushed into a more managerial role, with an assistant to handle some of the more day-to-day stuff, has influenced this line of reasoning as well).
interestingly enough, we both now spend more time discussing semantics (“is this really a definition list?” or “should i be using CITE for this title?”), information architecture and *gasp* strategy/guidelines/politics than actual design.
the design aspect itself certainly has been displaced for a lot of sites. commercial projects are now, for me anyway, less and less about the pretty looks, but the technology and proper structuring of information. however, on some more art-related sites, i still feel there’s room to experiment. but to really vent my creative juices, i’ve picked up video editing and postproduction again as a little hobby…
Posted on February 4, 2004 05:29 PM | #
4. Chris Vincent said:
I was actually thinking about this a month ago. If content is king, where does design fit in? RSS feeds serve up the “king” without all the overhead of design and ornamentation. Aggregators can even style the content to an extent.
However, in thinking all of this, I’ve come to realize that web design will always be there. Magazines didn’t start serving up strips of paper with the articles printed on them. They’d be cheaper to run and maintain, and users would still get the content. They could even supply the necessary photography with the articles. However, print media hasn’t taken this direction. Design will always be there, from the aesthetic side to the usability side. RSS feeds aren’t an alternative method for viewing the website; they are a method for checking on site updates and for viewing the content when it wouldn’t be appropriate to go to the website (like when you’re on the run, or you’re reading via a cellphone).
As far as “web alternatives” go, it’s difficult to foresee where it will take us. Even the developers of these alternatives don’t know the impact their products will create. However, these systems seem to be geared towards corporate infrastructure; the web as we know it will probably still remain.
Then again, we never know what the future will hold. But even if “the web” is completely different, designers will still be needed for everything from technical support to drawing users in to actually getting the systems working. That’s what I love about this field; constantly changing requirements on a constantly changing medium require that I have a constantly changing base of knowledge. It’s hard for a job like that to become mundane.
Just to top all of this off, a meteorite will hit somewhere on the Mexican peninsula some ten years from now. Where I live, the wall of fire will incinerate me in approximately three minutes from impact, and none of this will matter. Have a nice day. :)
Posted on February 4, 2004 08:15 PM | #
5. Jeremy Flint said:
I would say the term “Web Designer” saw its glory back in the hey-day of the dot com era. Then, when there were huge interactive firms, such as razorfish, you could truly be “only” a web designer, doing nothing but churning out designs all day and passing them off to someone else to code up.
I used to consider myself a web designer. Now I feel that I am more of a web developer. On a daily basis, I can be assigned any number of tasks from troubleshooting a PERL based CMS system, to writing and coding forms to be processed via ASP and e-mailed using CDONTS, to trying to figure out why a client cannot login to our extranet using their NT password. Throw in a little Lingo trouble shooting in Director and some digital video conversion on the Media100 system for good measure. In between there, I may get to do some designing.
It keeps me on my toes. If I did nothing but Photoshop work for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, I do believe I would go mad. This is why I am a web developer, and not a graphic designer as my degree might lead one to believe.
Posted on February 4, 2004 08:51 PM | #
6. Patrick Griffiths said:
I think that the comment that Matt made about needing to know PHP/Perl/CMS etc. to be a successful web designer is wrong. It is the case that job specifications do tend to demand more and more skills, but an employer that is on the ball and needs to build a top-class team needs specialists, and jobs for specialists do arise (I’ve managed it for a good few years now).
Working on your own, as a one-man-band, I see the argument. If you are the sole web maker, you need as many skills as possible to create a web site that is better than the next guy.
But in a company situation, with a team of web designers/developers, it is foolish to believe that you can get the same results from a single jack-of-all-trades than you can from a number of masters.
In my experience most graphic designers aren’t particularly good when it comes to even the most simple development and most developers struggle to come up with anything approaching visually appealing.
There are exceptions, of course. Many of the popular web-standards advocates (such as a certain Mr. Robinson) pull off both design and development, but it is unusual to find a web maker, or any individual for that matter, who has real best-of-the-best expertise in more than one field.
Posted on February 5, 2004 02:28 AM | #
7. Andy Budd said:
A few years back, the bulk of my job involved visual design, building templates and a bit of gif/page/content bashing. These days, visual design and template creation only takes up about 5-10% of the time I spend on a project. The rest of the project is taken up with planning (meetings, project specs etc) and where I’m capable, little bits of development.
There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, when you’re new to the business you tend to do smaller/cheaper sites. As you get more established, you start to get larger projects, and larger projects inevitably involve much more planning. Also when I started out, sites were essentially pretty simple, brocureware sites with little functionality. Now days, everything is database driven making things much more involved. Lastly, web designers have become more professional at their jobs and have started caring more about good process and project management, usability, accessibility IA etc.
Design is still extremely important, but it takes up much less time in the average project. In fact many developers seem to ignore design all toogether. My job title is still that of Senior Web Designer, but these days I feel it really doesn’t describe what I do very well.
Posted on February 5, 2004 03:10 AM | #
8. ste said:
In some ways, I think the move away from pure design is probably a good thing. After all, good web design has to come from more than just inspiration and Photoshop - the fact that web designers need to consider usability, accessibility, and (at least for some) adherence to web standards necessarily means that they spend more time with planning and development. Content also plays a stronger role in web design than in more traditional media because it has to be easily accessible. An article that would be great for National Geographic would probably pose significant problems for most readers on the web (because of its length, because of its poor scannability, etc.). So web designers also have to be editors to some degree - at least enough to say, “The visitor will get bogged down here. Please make this easier to read on a screen.”
Additionally, the interactive environment means that designers need to at least have some idea of the capabilities of various programming languages so they can design appropriately, even if someone else is doing the development portions.
Personally, I think that over time the disparate roles of web designer, web developer, and webmaster will merge as software makes it easier to control the more mundane aspects of designing and developing websites. (That said, WYSIWYG editors aren’t at the point yet where *I’m* comfortable trusting my markup to them explicitly.) I’m not saying that the three roles will disappear altogether, but there will certainly be less distinction between them.
Posted on February 5, 2004 06:44 AM | #
9. clint said:
If you want to build a shed, you go to Home Depot, pick up the short list of parts, easily see how they go together, and put it up over a weekend.
If you want to build a house, you call an architect, contractor, plumber, electrician and landscaper.
The great thing about the web is that there will always be room for smaller sites that don’t need anything but smart design and clear organization. These needs can be met be a single, versatile “web designer.”
But as the project becomes more complex, it needs specialists. Then the role of “web designer” becomes what ste was talking about. Still a designer, but with more focused issues.
Posted on February 5, 2004 07:19 AM | #
10. MJH said:
As long as your header and pretentious tagline keep blinking in my IE, there will be a need for a web designer.
(Not a knock on you, but IE of course.)
Posted on February 5, 2004 08:00 AM | #
11. Jacob said:
I think that if you can find one person to do the work, (assuming your site isn’t massive and needs a team), that would be a web developer. But, there’s something to be said for having one person develop a concept, a designer to present it graphically, and the developer to implement and test it for usability, accessibility, and whatever else. I know my graphics skills are weak, which is why I’ve never really offered to build someone a site or attempt entry into the freelance world. I would need someone to do graphics because a two-column CSS, text-only site just doesn’t cut it everywhere, even if I can make the links look like buttons. But if I was forced to put a label on myself for the type of websites I build, I would definitely say web developer.
Posted on February 5, 2004 11:11 AM | #
12. Terry said:
A web designer should be responsible (and or involved) for the end result of “talking to the user”. This involves basic design concepts, page layout and design, navigational elements, graphical creation and presentation, user interface, multimedia, markup, css and client-side scripting. I don’t see being replaced by a program anytime soon. Putting aside the ability to be fluent with the server-side aspect, having exceptional skills in all the above areas is a rare thing.
Posted on February 5, 2004 12:18 PM | #
13. Gilbert Lee said:
I’m sorry but no way is a designer going to be obsolete. I can see designing for the web becoming more efficient and smarter but to say that…hmm, just can’t believe it.
Well, if that was true, then why do we still have graphic designers? How about architects? Interior designers? Web designers like these that I just mentioned are craftsmen. They are hired because of their talent to design effective solutions and not just to “create” a package, house, or a website. Sure we have badly designed homes, packages, websites because they rely solely on a program or application. No talent.
A designer is a designer is a designer. A good one that is.
Posted on February 5, 2004 01:16 PM | #
14. Cameron Adams said:
I can see where some people are going in advocating the “purity” of a true designer, but I don’t think it exists.
If you required no knowledge of underlying technologies such as CSS, XML, server-side scripting, etc. then any good print designer should be able to come to the Web and do a good web design. But they can’t (and quite often don’t – refer to previous discussion on Flash).
I’m not saying that a web designer needs an intimate knowledge and understanding of how all these things work, but knowing about what they can do, how they aid usability, accessibility, etc. will make for a much better “designer” and design.
An architect can make a beautiful, physics defying structure and tell the engineer to implement it, but it isn’t going to happen; they have to have some knowledge of what’s capable and what’s best.
Posted on February 5, 2004 04:38 PM | #
15. Scrivs said:
I think bad web designers will become obsolete eventually. Great web designers will never become obsolete. At least not for a while.
Posted on February 5, 2004 05:22 PM | #
16. Matt said:
Scrivs, I agree. There is always room for those individuals that are great at a given task, in this case, web design. The people that are tremendously skilled in this area (and this area only) can be successful. There are still jobs at design firms, and the big companies that are willing to shell though thousands of dollars for an excellent web presence will keep them in work.
But, as a whole, I think Keith has a point. What if you aren’t an elite designer? Take me for example. I’m certainly not qualified to work for a big design firm. Am I OK to do some freelance work for smaller sites? Sure. But I’m qualified because I know how to do a range of tasks, one of which is web design. If a person of my skill level (well above your average HTML hack, but nowhere near the level of the most prominent designers in the web standards community) is unable to find work strictly as a designer, then the profession might not be obsolete, but it is so hard to break into that it might not even be a realistic profession at all.
As it stands, and I might be exaggerating a bit, landing a good job at a design firm working strictly on design and nothing else is about equivalent with becoming a major league baseball player. Sure, there are the minor leagues where one can make a decent living, but to really make it is no easy task, and you have to be damn good at what you do to get there.
Posted on February 5, 2004 07:49 PM | #
17. Veerle Pieters said:
I think that the web designers who deliver only the best designs and have a broad experience in designing web pages can stick to do only the design part and the html templates. That’s what I do mostly nowadays. I’ve been designing for the web since 1996 and I must say that if I was just “not good not bad” that I would be out of a job.
But I must agree that the focus of the whole project has moved over the years. The design has become a small part of the entire project just because website gets more and more important and because of that almost any website is database driven and needs to be.
I think to remain a designer you also need to design not only for the web but also for print, cd-rom, create presentations, interfaces for software,… That’s at least what I do. I only do design work but I don’t only stick to web design. It’s not enough these days unless you got the knowledge to program in PHP etc.
If you’re able to focus on only design just like me and you’re not scared about digging into the code and making sure it’s good standard code, keep accessibility in mind etc. then you have a chance to be and exception.
For bigger projects where I deal with everything I become more of a coordinator then a designer, so I sure understand where this all comes from. But then again, what would the web be without good graphical designers? My feeling is that programming, OK it’s pretty important, but what’s the good of it if the interface is ugly and unappealing? I will never dig deeper in a site or buy online at an unprofessional looking website. We are still an important part of the project.
Posted on February 6, 2004 12:18 AM | #
18. Darrel said:
I know in my daily job I spend much less time designing as I do managing, implementing, planning, architecting and enhancing.
I’d define all of that a part of web design.
I think you are actually referring to visual design. That’s just one part of the overall web design process.
Posted on February 6, 2004 07:48 AM | #
19. Phunky said:
Theres no way you can just be a ‘Designer’ in web media anymore…
You just wont get the constent work flow! not unless you the likes of “happycog”.
But i belive that most web designers should know some form off SSL as HTML/CSS is just the start of a website.
If you cant get the hang of a SSL then why not move into search engine optermization, As a well designed CSS/XHTML site is a key thing for that ;) specialy if you know a trick or two :)
Posted on February 12, 2004 02:35 AM | #
20. Shilpa said:
Hi
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Regards,
Shilpa Solanki
(Ace Infotech)
Posted on April 20, 2004 05:27 AM | #
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