Wow, it has been too long my friends, June 22nd.  I have decided to share a short rant involving the interaction of designers and developers in the work flow.

I recently read an article on smashing magazine, How to Effectively Communicate with Developers, and I can’t help but feel as the view is heavily skewed.  I have worked with  many great designers, but I have worked with equally amount of bad designers.  I’ve also worked with, seen, many bad developers who really do not posses the skills to take a design to production properly, so I feel your pain designers.  If you want a fullproof tactic to attack the problem, the solution is simple, get the developer inolved earlier.  When I worked in the advertising world here is the common scenario: Read the rest of this entry »

After cutting and coding hundereds of sites, I have become very irritated with some common things designers do.  Please note, I’m not saying all Designers, but a good portion.

1. Design a site way beyond 980 pixels, I prefer 960.
2. Use a non-web standard font for content….you (designer) have just forced me to explain to account service and the client why their fonts don’t look right.
3. If the website is only 8 pages, there is no need to design a search feature.  Rule of thumb….if I can click to every page from the homepage, then I don’t need a search.
4. Email layouts: Why would you use nothing but large jpg images?  Please know large emails are labeled as spam.  Also, don’t use too many background images, because many email clients do not like. (you can still use old school background attribute)
5. Email layout width is much smaller than a website, so please do not send me an email that is 1,000 pixels wide….thanks!

The most common response I get when I send a design back to a designer due to one of the many infractions I’ve listed above is, “Your destroying my creativeness”.  No, sir/mam I’m helping you design better for the web.  A good designer can make something amazing, while still working within constraints.

Anyways, I welcome everyone to post their rants, we’re ranting…not complaining ;), about designers and for designers to post their rants about developers…..come on…let it out….it’ll make you feel better ;).