DigiKev

Greetings fellow Kev!
I know exactly where you are coming from.

I too come from a graphic design training background (degree in Graphic Arts) and have arrived at this point in my life as a web designer via some intensive book reading, trial and error, and some school-boy errors on the way!

From my experience working alongside graphic designers on web projects, the pros are:

- a more user biased perspective
- often more challenging ideas to try and tackle
- varied design styles

the cons are:

- designs often get taken beyond 'mood board' / 'discovery' / 'initial layout ideas' stage and get signed off before a 'web-head' has got involved. Argh! Nightmare!
- designs often have to be re-done in ready for layout image optimisation and application via html/css (I still sometimes get 700MB CMYK Illustrator files to work with!)
- the designs can often overlook more important functionality issues which are key to the sites success

It's swings and roundabouts. The key is good project management / communication at stage 1, and using each individual member of the project to their strengths, and also knowing where visual design ends and web design begins.

I do find that many graphic designers get too wrapped up in how things look. For example, you could design a chair that looks amazing, but if every time someone sat down on it a chair leg went up their arse, that's - well - "bad design", regardless of how 'cool' it looks!

Keep up the good work ;)

I think Kev Adamson really covers it all. I think all graphic designers could become web designers if they take the time to research the subject. But it's not as simple as putting together a design in PhotoShop or Quark Express (although why some designers are using a print design package for web is another matter entirely) and expecting it to transfer well to web.

There are so many other factors to consider not least usability, readability, ability to reconstruct the design in HTML and above all a flexible design that will grow with content.

Content is king online and I'm exasperated sometimes by designers who will consistently try to put design over content. What is the point of a pretty website that does nothing?

It's just a lazy approach - why not rise to the challenge of providing both?

Hi Kev(s), I don't have any further contribution on the issue itself, I think the two of you have nailed the problems we face day to day very nicely. You did however inspire me to expand your points a little on a different tangent over on my "oh-so-very-lacking-in-content-lately" blog - hope you don't mind. I do have a couple of experiences to share with you though.

To save space on a layout space designers will often place the labels to a form inside their relevant fields. Of course, they don't understand the importance of a <label>, but that hardly matters when you're actually trying to figure the best way to inform them that no matter how hard you try the password field can NEVER be pre-filled with "Enter your password..." and the design will now have to be adjusted to make room for proper labels.

Another problem I've experienced before. Rows of products with varying descriptions. Of course, the photoshop files have every single product showing the same length description, but let your customer loose in a CMS and pretty soon what you planned to make by just left floating a few divs is now all out of line. You either end up truncating your descriptions, which still offer no guarantees of alignment or stick it in a table. Yuck!