interfacelab

37Signals can go fuck themselves. There I said it and I feel better now.

Their last two postings about their workflow are heaping helpings of not awesomeness. Their latest post, Designers Should Do Their Own HTML, is such complete near-sighted garbage I can’t help but to laugh at the cling-ons sucking the shit up in the comments.

In summary, they suggest that designers do their own HTML/CSS. This is so completely laughable I am not even sure how to respond. But, before I do, let me give you a little of my own background so you can understand where I’m coming from: I started out in the game roughly 15 years ago, give or take, doing multimedia/kiosk and eventually moving into the web around the time Netscape 3 was released. I’ve been doing web related ever since then. I’ve worked at small agencies, gargantuan agencies, start ups, big soulless pharmas and everywhere in-between. I’ve been an art director, an html monkey, a back end warrior - and have even done such obscure things as writing control software for elevators and music sequencers for the desktop.

Their last blog entry essentially posits that designers should do their own HTML/CSS. They theorize that it’ll learn those pesky designers on the limitations of HTML/CSS and - thus - design accordingly. They also hint that it’ll save time in the workflow. It totally explains why all of their stuff looks like it does, which is not to say that it looks bad, but perhaps not as good as it could be or should be. It is clean and functional, but lacks personality and I’d be hard pressed to call any of it innovative in any sense of the word.

Back during bubble one, we used to call front-end developers Design Technologists. They were the bridge between the designers and the backend, translating comps into workable front-end code and then integrating that front-end code with whatever madness the back end cooked up. Design is a very specific skill set, it’s about visual communication. The designer is responsible for taking a bucket load of information and not only showing it to the user in a way that makes sense, but also in a way that is usable and aesthetically pleasing. To shackle them to HTML/CSS, which is it’s own very specific skill set, it constricting and limiting and has nothing to do with design at all. Would you prefer someone that excels at one particular skill set, or someone that is simply marginal in both? I’m not sure about you, but I want my designer/user experience person to focus on the one thing they excel at. If they want to take a crack at doing some HTML/CSS, good for them, but I don’t expect anything of value from it because I have sharpshooting front-end people with brains who understand that design comps aren’t literal and know - or should know - how to deal with whatever the designer/UX throws at them.

Furthermore, that little save in the workflow will come around and fuck you when all that html/css is thrown out the window by someone who is actually skilled in html/css and sees it for what it is. Honestly, I don’t see any save in time here at all. Developing HTML/CSS is tedious enough as it is, to add in the task of doing design with it on the fly is just plain mentally retarded if you want to approach visuals that go beyond the simplistic shit. Why does everything have to look like a wireframe with window dressing? Where has the innovation gone?

No other communication industry does it this way. In the print world it is retarded to assume that your designers are going to crank out press ready layouts, that shit almost always goes through someone skilled in pre-press production - the technical equivalent of an html/css jockey. Designers don’t need to know about the mundane like printing screens, trapping, overprinting, color separations.

And then, what the fuck to do about flash/silverlight/SVG/HTML5? Going to have to rejigger that workflow fellas because now the skillset on either side is to broad to expect more than a handful of individuals to do well at both. UI is only going to get more complicated from here on out. Feels better to me to be prepared for that eventuality than to cross that bridge when it comes to it, but maybe because I’ve been there before and understand that each innovation in client technology requires both disciplines to up their games.

Finally, 37signals doesn’t even do client work nor do they really take heed from their paying customers. Their sites and their products are also relatively small compared to the rest of the web where this kind of discussion is applicable. I suppose if you’re cranking out small apps like 37signals than their advice might be golden, but honestly I think it’ll be a nightmare for them down the road when someone less lazy eclipses their simplistic product offerings with something deeper and richer.