as a hiring manager for an in-house ecommerce department (i lead a team of web designers responsible for the design, usability and content of our ecommerce websites), i do expect my designers and potential candidates to be sound in design applications and front-end code/mark-up such as html, css and javascript (jQuery). however, those are not ‘developing’ skills.

there is a hard line that should be drawn between designer and developer. with knowing the differences in my experience, a developer delves into the ‘back-end’ and works with the sites root web language (java, asp, php, etc.) to build web applications, communicate to legacy systems, query databases, build template frameworks, and create page variables that interface with the front-end design. too many times i’ve witnessed developers spending time with styling out my pages and i cringe. something that would take them two days to figure out (and still not get it to look optimal) one of my designers or myself could get to the polished end-result in minutes.

when i’m looking for a designer for my team and i see applicants that possess these ‘developer’ skills but are replying to a ‘web designer’ ad i immediately dismiss them. but that’s not a stance against web designers possessing technical skills. on the contrary, web design is obviously technical by nature so it’s required. but that skill-set should be relegated to ‘front-end’ technical skills. sure a designer needs to know what those web languages are doing on the page and also need to be able to move things around a bit on the page after the developer places them there. but they are not the ones creating java classes, servlets and jar files.

designers have an advantage over developers because a creative person can learn code, but an analytical person can not learn to be creative, at least not to the professional degree that is required for a strong branding presence on the web. as a designer i’ve built many content sites from end-to-end but i didn’t need know java, asp or even php. how would a developer accomplish the same result? what kind of photoshop skills would they have, would they have an eye for color, layout and composition, or the user-experience as a whole?

my advice to employers is to find a rock-star web designer and a rock-star developer and never-the-tween-shall-meet. else you’ll come up short on both ends.

my advice to designers and developers is to focus on one or the other but understand what the other is doing since you’ll be working together to accomplish a common goal in the end…

…and more advice to web design students, make sure you are taking some fine-art courses. i’ve met web designers who don’t know how to draw or paint. yikes! crawl before you run.