Over the last several years, WordPress has introduced—and continues to iterate on—the Gutenberg block editor, full-site editing, and block themes. I’ve largely avoided full-site editing and block themes until recently. My thought was: why change when I have a workflow and tools that work? My workflow/tools included building classic themes while relying heavily on the […]
Should designers be coders? (v2.0)
I’ve talked about this in the past on this blog. I was reminded of this debate from a past professor who re-blogged a post by Frank Chimero. So, should designers be coders? The answer is, “Yes, to an extent.” I say ‘to an extent’, because we can’t expect a web designer to be able to […]
Designers don’t make things look ‘pretty’
What do designers do? Make things ‘pretty’ and ‘put a new coat of paint on something’, right? Wrong. A designer is someone who communicates visually through various mediums. This could be through print design, web design, and especially wayfinding design (the design of directional signs in our environment). The end result is hopefully something that […]
Should designers know how to code?
This debate recently came up in the web design blogosphere in the last week or so. It all started with a tweet heard ’round the world by Elliot Jay Stocks. Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse. – elliotjaystocks There have been […]
What makes a website great?
I recently read this on CSS-Tricks: There are websites that we visit because we have to, but we wouldn’t get an account with. There are websites that we have accounts with that we would never participate in. There are websites we participate in that we don’t enjoy. There are websites that we enjoy but don’t […]
Misconceptions of Designing for the Web
Websites should look pretty and that’s all that matters. They should be well designed, but from a usability standpoint. It’s not a magazine ad, where the audience just looks at and reads it. Think about how the user will navigate through the site, their Internet speed, browser support, search engine optimization. I don’t know HTML […]