Duuel 
Remember the War 
HFord Recently there has been quite a few articles about what makes a web designer. What a web designer should have to know in order for him/her to be a web designer. Should they all know how to write HTML and CSS as well as come up with designs in Photoshop and Illustrator?
I design sites but do not code, I have a basic knowledge of code and have built sites in the past. But for the company I work for I do not need to code, I am surrounded by a team of highly skilled and knowledgeable people that are experts in front/back end site building. I try to keep my knowledge up to date by learning from them.
I find it all slightly disrespectful to all designers like me who work in teams of people to have these so called heads of web design or professionals who find it so hard to believe that designers cannot or do not build the back end of their designs.
You could compare it to a manager of a football team (soccer for all you yanks) It is never essential that they were a world beating football player on the pitch, you just need to understand what goes on. If you were looking for a defender for your football team and you had two football players one who was pretty good up front and also quite good in defense but the other was a far superior defender you would not discount him because the other guy was slightly better all rounder.
If you want to design for anything, you have to understand the medium you are working within. For web design it’s usability within the browser.
In the end a designer that can code does not automatically become a better designer.
Photo by kindofblue
If anything learning to code for a designer might actually cloud your creativity.
Hey, Point taken. I my self is a freelance designer and I code websites(only my own design) as well. And I been doing this for past 3 years. Before that when I was doing a full time job, & I just design stuff. For coding things there were other people taking care of it.
So as I’m doing freelance NOW I have to code my web design Because In past my designs were really screwed by developers. And as I have to make a better reputation online & get more jobs I THOUGHT and started to code myself. I started from simple HTML/CSS .. then Web2.0 & CSS3 & now days I’m designing & developing WordPress & Joomla sites
NOW what I feel is that from these past 3 years, mostly I have learn is developing part comparing to design. & now I became a good website creator not a better designer.
Great debate. I’ve lived on the other side of the fence, however I like to class myself as more of a front end developer and digital designer.
I’ve often been at the receiving end of a design which simply does not work in the medium it is intended for very well, the web.
I guess it very much depends on the individual and their understanding of digital design. A lot of the guys I used to work alongside were primarily print designers who often got it wrong. However, as Dave mentioned, having knowledge of how things could often limit your creativity.
Great website and blog by the way. Keep up the great work and good luck freelancing, I’ve recently made the same jump! (Stay away from my clients! lol)