136 - Should Designers Code?

Should designers code? Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode Who Is Responsible for Design - Creative Review Article Eutrophic by Mystery Mammal Cart before the horse by Myriadar Where There Is No darkness by Nihilore Line-by-line notes There's several debates that are forever recurring in the design and tech worlds Is design art? Or is art design? Should a designer do multiple things? And the hottest topic and that comes around every week Should designers code? I probably going to get a bit offensive to designers in this episode. This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC Over the years I've lost count of how many times I've had this argument But I'm going to go at it again, becaause I like causing controversy And amazingly, I've not discussed it on this podcast before Let me lay out my stance straight away I have a dim view of designers who choose not to bother learning to code It's not just about designers though I have a dim view of anybody who actively chooses to stop learning things When it comes to designers, they actively choose not to bother learning how to code, or any of the technical side I'll try learning anything, because I love learning things And we should all love learning things, because it's the only way to grow as human beings, not just at our craft So I find it fascinating and maddening when I see anybody putting up a barrier to themselves and saying "No, I don't want to learn that and I don't want to know anymore about that" Knowing more about something makes you design it better, that is just a fact Not even technical stuff, the more you know about anything the better you'll design it So when it comes to websites, and especially now with responsive websites and there being so much changing so quickly You have to know how to build websites, to a point HTML and CSS isn't difficult to learn for anybody And I can't see a logical reason why somebody wouldn't want to learn it, or can't learn it The reasons for a designer designing websites to learn it are nothing but positive It helps you understand websites more It helps you design and make better websites And it makes you a better designer Why on earth would you not want those things? Who could argue against those points? We get too bogged down with titles  And too caught up with labels I'm a designer, therefore I can't be anything else I'm a developer, so that means the design is left to somebody else These titles aren't...