This is no more apparent than in recent debate of the “should we design in the browser” debate where some suggest now is the time to ditch Photoshop and build design in a code editor. In many of the arguments on offer, using traditional image editing software is dismissed as old hat, not true to the product on offer and confusing to the client. As far as I am concerned glorifying design in the browser as some kind of magic silver bullet is not going to wash, as much as these guys want it to. It’s worth remembering that people still make great design all the time with old versions of software, because the mind often overcomes technical limitations when it is allowed to.

Keeping up with the pace

The web is a fast paced and forever growing industry, but even in a short space of the last 2-3 years the output types the designer creates for for have changed radically. Tablets and responsive design weren’t even a “thing” 3 years ago, and while traditional browsers might be important now, they may not be in future.

That experience should tell us that in 2-3 years the end product we’re designing for will change again. Photoshop itself will probably disappear as desktop sized large tablets become the norm, and designers could be working on digitised paper of some sort. And that’s where this point lies, these are just tools with which to make your ideas happen on screen. The tool can never replace creativity and good ideas.

No more code

Many designers are slower coders or can’t do it at all. If the industry continues to diversify display types at the pace it is now, in production environments everywhere designers will do no code. At all. This is because they will be designing for so many possibilities there will be a real to split roles. Code will become the sole domain of developers again, and rightly so. Developers can instinctively and quickly make changes to code, they will become the true engineers of the web.

Hello?! Is it me you’re looking for?

As Andy Budd argues, design tools are there to have as little a threshold between an idea and transferring that into a sketch (the quickest way) and then a design in software of choice. So the answer for web designers, as much as some will not enjoy the fact, is still Photoshop.

I’m all for progress, I know that Photoshop can be a pain and that it doesn’t represent the fluid fancy pants nature of websites. But it is used in hundreds of other industries when the visual produced doesn’t directly end up as the finished product. Why? Because it is the designers playground, their tool with which their ideas come to life. That is why designing in code makes no sense. By opening a browser before playing with imagery, possibilities become limited and the creativity evaporates. The design will naturally fit in the nice little box in front of you.

To remove this playground from the process eliminates the opportunity for brilliant errors and fantastic ideas you simply would not explore when transfixed with code. All design needs a solid “thinking space” where it can exist completely free of technical limitations, and that space is what design in the browser destroys. Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking you can let skip creativity and solid foundations without skipping on quality of your websites.

Links

Sarah Parmenter: http://www.sazzy.co.uk/2012/02/why-i-cant-design-in-the-browser/trackback/

Government Digital Service: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/03/29/breaking-down-walls-designing-in-browser/

Andy Budd: http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2012/03/designing_in_the_browser_is_not_the_answ/

Treehouse: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/responsive-web-design-in-the-browser-part-1-kill-photoshop