The field of web cannot survive without designers & developers who work in a combination to make things happen. But there is one constrain that is always time taking, lacks resource and cause issue when the design meets the logic.

Pure designer know one thing best that is make layouts that look visually pleasing, colors that bring the Wao effect as soon as you see and typography that just compels you to read. Stuff like this does look amazing on photoshop or a jpg mock up but if you some how hand over your baby to developers there is chance the line height might change, correct font might not be used and maybe the little curve that you put on the top disappears. Stuff like this do happen, designers restrain from coding even HTML / CSS while developers restrain from looking into details.

When ever i conducted interviews for design job and asked if they know how to code html / css there was a “no we don’t” answer and strong resistance to such a query, stating it a technical and non creative job. Is coding non creative … then who said “Code is Poetry” a quote written on the footer of wordpress.

I never resisted from coding to xhtml / css / Javascript & using of jQuery as well rather i fell for it, css is like a beauty for my design and a challenge to solve design problems keeping technical details in hand, if web is limited to 4-5 fonts only i know that when i design, if something in css is impossible i would know and might not put that in my design, in my view coding helps designer visualize better and keep the design he build intact with technical constrains. If i know what can be done with jQuery i can make my layout screen that will make use of it as well.

Being a big fan of 37signals there way of working [4 days of work week], there products and the company itself i have been very inspired by there posts specially the one i recently read “Designer who also develop have more power” it raised a very questionable thought in mind and makes a very strong sense on the benefits if a designer can code or a developer who can design. The most compelling benefit is that things getting done quickly, no one is dependent on another.

Here i will put forward two scenarios say a developer receives layouts for an application as big as facebook, now the layout will be probably be 5-10 pages designed in photoshop delivered work begins and developers finds out there are 10 more pages that are quite similar but the data type & its arrangement has changed what should be done … the work comes to an hold and designer is activated again who spends another day in completing those layout sending them over and so on.

Keep the same scenario and convert the developer into a designer / developer so would there be any halt…. would that person be more resourceful and an asset to the company / client he presents ?

I was just roaming around on the net and was going through Genex Blog and stumbled upon the story on AboutUs.org, which happen to have an office in Lahore. AboutUs.org is a sort of wikipedia, but instead of wiki about dead people i mean historic stuff and encyclopedia it a wiki on people, business & web according to them

AboutUs is a wiki whose goal is to create a free and valuable Internet resource containing information both about websites and other community created topics. The site was pre-populated with information about many different websites and thousands of updates are now being made by people each day.

So to test the site i entered my name and search, when result came i was bit shocked as some one had been kind enough to add all my information there, even my picture ! My website was already listed with all its details. Its a good feeling to see that happen and gives a feeling as if you were some kind of a famous Designer on whom people would write about any how apart from that day dreaming part it is a bit scary as well in terms of Privacy, as what all we publish on our web properties gets reproduced some other place without our knowledge.