“So you want to be a farmer, eh? Farming ain’t easy, boy, but it’s honest work and it puts food on the table. How much do you know about it?”
“Not much, but I’d like to get started right away.”
“I like your attitude, boy! Ever had a garden?”
“No. Never really wanted one.”
“Hm. Well, maybe I could start you plantin’ some corn. That ain’t too hard, and it’s good for learnin’ how to put the seeds in right, plus I could take the time to cover some of the basics about weather signs.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t want to plant seeds or hear about the weather, of all things. I want to be a farmer.”
“You all there in the head, boy? How else do you plan to grow food, if you don’t plant seeds and keep the fields watered and fertilized? How do you expect to have your crops make it without knowin’ about the weather?”
“Why would I want to dig in the dirt or listen to boring lectures about meteorology, when all I want is to be a farmer?”
“So you want to be a sculptor, eh? Well, it’s a long and difficult road, but full of rewards for those who can master the skills. To start out with, here’s a hammer, a chisel, and a block of soapstone. Try sculpting a sphere, and then we’ll see–”
“Excuse me, but I’m not interested in chipping away at rock. I just want to be a great sculptor.”
“What?”
“I said, I’m not interested–”
“I heard you. I just didn’t understand what you meant.”
“The goal of a sculptor is to create art, right? That’s what I want to do, create art, not fiddle with these silly tools or get stone dust all over me.”
“Wait just a minute. You’re saying that you want to be a sculptor but you don’t want to learn how to chisel stone? That you’re not interested in learning the properties of granite, marble, and so on?”
“That’s right. Why would I?”
“Well, now I’ve heard everything! Listen, you can’t be a sculptor without understanding the nature of stone. It’s just not possible.”
“Don’t be absurd. Maybe all that stuff is interesting to you, but I’m an artist. Creation is my business, and frankly it’s a mystery to me why you think I should be bothered with anything else. Now, are you going to teach me to sculpt or not?”
“So you want to be a graphic designer, eh? Graphic design has a long and noble tradition, as Edward Tufte has made abundantly clear in his various works, and these days it’s done as much on computers as on paper. Accordingly, it’s important to know as much about computers and programs like Illustrator as it is to know about paper and ink. Furthermore, no matter what medium is used, it’s critical to have insight into the human brain and perceptual senses, color theory, and a great deal more. I’m sorry, did you have a question?”
“Yes. When do I start designing?”
“Well, of course you’ll be doing some basic design work as you study all the aspects of design I just mentioned, of course. After all, one of the best ways to learn is to do.”
“No, no. You talked about a lot of stuff that doesn’t interest me. All I want to do is design, not be subjected to a lot of boring stuff like learning computer programs and psychology.”
“Maybe you weren’t paying attention. Understanding those things is necessary in order to be a designer. Without them, you’re just scribbling. How can you hope to create a great design without understanding how your work is perceived? The wrong color palette, for example, can completely undermine your message; or, alternatively, be deliberately chosen in order to intentionally undermine it, thus giving the design an extra layer of meaning.”
“You really believe all that, don’t you? Sad. Look, just because you think that kind of thing is interesting doesn’t mean that you should go around forcing it on other people. I’m here to be a designer, not a psychologist or a computer geek or whatever else you think I should be instead.”
“Look, if you’re not willing to learn the basics, then maybe design isn’t for you.”
“Oh, sure, whenever someone isn’t willing to quietly swallow your pretensions, you declare them unfit to join your holy order, is that it? The only people who can be designers are the ones who think just like you, right? The ones who play your little games and jump through the hoops you set up? You just keep stroking your ivory tower, okay? Just stop pretending that you know what makes a good designer, because it’s clear you’ve become completely dissociated from reality.”
“So you want to be a web designer, eh? Well, that’s fine, just fine! There’s a lot to learn, but I’d be happy to get you started. First, we’ll talk about markup languages and semantics. Then we’ll spend a good deal of time on how CSS works and how it compares to older forms of layout, plus a basic grounding in the nature of text flow and ‘limitless canvas’ flows. After that–”
“Hold on there, Poindexter. I want to be a web designer, not a computer scientist.”
Like this article? Digg it!
amen:)
i guess sometime we need a little naviety to do great things
This is an interesting article because often design is about attitude.
Would you start telling an illustrator like Jeremyville about grids? Would you preach major scales and music theory to a DJ? Sure, often these types of folk know their stuff, but often not and they produce highly original and creative work.
As long as junior web designers are placed in front of a PC running a WSYWYG (even dreamweaver) editor and they are given a PSD file to PIXEL PERFECT REDRAW it into HTML semantic web will have to wait.
I think the “web design” term should be dropped. It served it’s purpose well but now it’s obsolete just like the old browsers are. Or at least call it “design for web” so we all correctly understand the priorities and responsibilities.
Features?
was supposed to be:
<h1>Features</h1> ?
Preach on brother. Well said.
하, 농부가 되고 싶다고?…
불친절한 금자씨, 그 두번째 이야기. Eric Meyer가 Vitamin에 쓴 “Stand Up For Your Rights!”에 대한 날림 번역.
……
VERY well said. I have been pondering exactly what you have put into words. What we experience as developers, is really experienced in EVERY other field as well. Truth is, people still make a business out of doing things they know nothing about.
However, instead of constantly ripping those people - I have worked on the approach of helping them where I can. This has proven to be very frustrating as well. They want to get paid for the job, but they don’t want to know how to do it. They don’t understand the importance of doing something the RIGHT way - they just want to make the client happy with a sub-par product (and both parties go away happy - not knowing there is something better out there).
I think in this profession we can attribute this mindset to the thinking that ‘everyone can have a webpage’,'everyone can be a web designer’, etc..train of thought that initially was moving around. It simply isn’t that easy. There are professional tools, you need to understand your medium. Understand how a server interacts with a client machine. Understand some common response codes. Understand how the pages interact with different browsers. Understand how the browsers work when handling scripts/styles/html/etc. The list goes on….
Truth is, people (Web developers) don’t see that as important. Why should they? They have GoLive and Dreamweaver to do all of the work for them…
Perfectly said — Good morning read!
Therefore we have a lot of interesting books on information architecture, user experience design, web usability, design patters, web business practices. All this stuff and much more are worth reading. Dont confine yourself to books about coding.
For example:
http://www.sensible.com/
Funny stuff.
And I totally agree with Johan here. Don’t get to thinking Web design is all about tools and technique. Sure those are important, but so are the “softer” skills.
This was a waste of time. Verbose anyone?
RE: Keith/Johann
I agree with you 110% with your statements. As professionals, we need to study how people interact with the web, how they respond to different colors/layouts/typograhpy/etc. We need to understand our users - which is a whole other ballgame to just throwing up a design from a WYSIWYG.
It doesn’t stop there - how about after it launches? Are we watching and monitoring its real usability, or do we just let it go by itself?
RE: Stephen
You obviously missed the ENTIRE point to the article, ironically bringing a case in point to the article itself.
Reminds me of the apocryphal tale about two tradesmen doing exactly the same job:
When asked what he was doing, the first replied “laying bricks”. When asked the same question the second replied “building a cathedral”.
A good metaphor for the web design/development industry today?
Wonderful. And very refreshing. I’m so tired of the debates about professionalism and what exactly defines it and what doesn’t. Passion is essential.
i get asked a lot by kids wanting to get into design, or by people just finishing up design in school. where to look for jobs, what skills to focus on, how to become better, etc…
most of the time i just tell them, what do i know? i just design, i don’t do any industry analysis.
that’d be like asking a political leader what he thought of politics. you think you’d get an objective version of anything from them?
I like this article, very thoughtful one. You can never be “somebody” or successful with your chosen career unless you have passion, dedication, hardwork and willingness to learn things from the ground rules.
Nate K said it all. A good read, thanks.
Very well said, and a great way to put into words what I have been thinking/seeing lately. I have had more than one friend tell a prospective employer that they NEED to do both (to the suprise of the employer that they knew how to do both). How can a designer design without knowing the limitations of the code? A great product only appears when the person putting it together not only knows what good design is, but also how good design can work with the code that is available.
[…] Tea Articles: Stand Up For Your Rights! […]
Craftmanshift will never die!
Better read than any article in the newspapers today, are excerpts allowed with backlink / source ?
Yes of course :)
nicely wriiten article, cutting out the crap and getting to the point.
It should be posted to all design schools around the world!
Great article. I think a few professors at my school need to read this.
I’m going to be the dissenting opinion here, because as I see it, Web site designs have been suffering considerably in the last few years. Too many designers have been getting hung up on the CSS trip, and they have forgotten their roots. You can talk about users, programs, code, semantics, etc., until you are blue in the face. In the end, you’re going to spread yourself so thin, that you will forget about what you do best — design. Whenever I work with designers I tell them, design it how you want it to look. Of course you need to pay attention to the business rules and the architecture, but design the site with passion in mind, not some mindless dribble about pixel-precision being “on the outs”. When you get it where you want it, we can hone the design from there. I don’t know what the working environment is elsewhere, but it is a rarity when an art director pieces together a composition that isn’t doable from a build perspective. For those naysayers, I don’t just mean doable, I mean, doable “right”.
Part of the issue is that the title of Web designer is thrown around too lightly these days. If you look on job boards, most Web design positions are also front-end coding jobs. This is a bad thing! The shift on the Web into this hybrid designer/developer position has got to swing back the other way. How can you possibly make a creative decision about a client’s brand, when you are too busy thinking about whether or not the site will validate! You think I am exaggerating, but that is the sweeping notion these days, and it is causing Web sites to regress into templating madness. It is a rarity to see an extremely visually appealing site standing by its own merit, or maybe we just don’t notice, because we are too busy viewing the source.
I agree that in order to be a web designer, you don’t need to have knowledge of semantic, CSS, the box model or other things to “make websites” but if you’re going to call yourself a web designer, don’t do the markup or styling of a site.
Simply design the site in Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks/etc and hand it off to a “web coder” who can make semantic, valid and “proper” web documents.
I think the term “web designer” is thrown around too much and is combined with other jobs, like a front-end developer. Creating a visually appealing website and creating a working website are not the same job and shouldn’t be treated that way.
“You just keep stroking your ivory tower, okay?”
Stroking it? Gross.
Wow, I get the impression that several of the commenters above thought this article was speaking against learning all of the background and history of the trade.
The point here is clearly that you can’t just rush into a trade and expect to perform well without learning all of the philosophy behind it. Picasso didn’t just grab a paint brush one day and start making crazy stuff, he started out learning the classical styles and becoming a master of those until he had a good enough grasp to go his own way. If you try to dive into a field without knowing what you’re doing, no matter how much creativity you have or think you have, you’ll come across as an amateur.
Man … I kind of want to be a farmer now.
David Hammond wrote “The point here is clearly that you can’t just rush into a trade and expect to perform well without learning all of the philosophy behind it.”
No. Your use of the word “clearly” is entirely wrong. If this many people were confused, including myself until I read your reply, it is not clear at all. The lack of clarity might be in part to the article’s intro, “Don’t let so-called experts tell you what you should know about becoming a web designer.” Now, I see it as tongue-in-cheek, but it that really made me read the article in the wrong light.
I even wrote a post about it that I’m going to have to go back and modify heavily…
This article is interesting for multiple reasons. First, it isn’t written asn an article, but more like a collection of anecdotal conversations.
It doesn’t completely spell out the point either. It leaves interpretation up to the reader.
Personally, I am able to interpret the article in two completely different ways, and my opinion falls somewhere in the middle, but closer to one side than the other.
The first way I interpreted the article… there is knowledge that you need to have before learning certain high-level skills.
The second way I interpreted the article… never lose site of the point of what you are doing.
I side more with the first interpretation, and I believe that is Eric Meyer’s position as well. I think the title is written sarcastically.
[…] Por Diego en Web Semantica Este artículo es una traducción del creado por Eric Meyer y publicado en Vitamin. […]
Article translated to Spanish (too good to leave it en English only :-)).
Artículo traducido al español.
Link: http://www.serialblogger.com.ar/2006/10/asi-que-queres-ser-un-granjero/
The student is a dabbler whose enthusiam dies the moment he realizes that becoming a _______ is *work*. He has no idea what any of the trades really entails, and he has no respect for any of his teachers. (In one case he’s outright rude.)
Several trade-masters offer up their time and expertise to train him, but the student refuses to study what his teacher knows he needs to learn. The student doesn’t even try to understand why the teacher thinks he ought to learn these things. That was what clinched my impression that the student was impatient and disrespectful.
There’s no reason to think that the trade-masters have lost their passion for their trades, or that they have forgotten the point. They know that passion has to be channelled through a great deal of knowledge and craft to produce a masterpiece, and that it’s damn hard work. But the hard work is worth it for the satisfaction of pointing to something solid and beautiful that fulfills its purpose, and knowing that you made that.
The student is doing a fine job of standing up for his right not to learn anything. It’s the trade-masters that aren’t standing up for their right to be respected.
Any work can be done mindfully. The attention and care that a mindful doer devotes gives even the most menial task a dignity that nothing can take away. It makes me sad that so many people don’t care enough about their work to intentionally put God into the details.
As long as junior web designers are placed in front of a PC running a WSYWYG (even dreamweaver) editor and they are given a PSD file to PIXEL PERFECT REDRAW it into HTML semantic web will have to wait.
Not entirely true imho.
I’m a designer by nature, and making websites as a hobby (and a little freelance). Because of that, I always design my websites in Photoshop first, after which I “redesign” the whole thing in a texteditor (Smultron). I only make semantic sites, and only use tables if its absolutely nessesery.
I do think that a lot of so called “web-developers” (or webdesigners for that matter) are just plainly ignoring the whole semantic-side of the web. They make or get their design in Photoshop, and before they start trying to put that design in a nice semantic website, they take the easy road and cramp it in a table-based website…. often a template they made themselves.
The problem is that a lot of the “oldskool” webdesigners know everything about tables. And it’s hard to learn an old dog new tricks. It’s up to websites like this to keep up and push all the newcomers to semantic webdesign. It doesn’t matter if you design first or code first…. that’s all up to the way you work. The important thing is that the new webdesigners are aware not to give up and take the easy road, but really get into the semantics. After you know your way around that, table-based design is really a pain in the royal behind.
Also read Passion for design, not only learn your craft but love your craft!
http://fadtastic.net/2006/10/10/passion-in-design/
“Form follows function”
Without at least a reasonalble understanding of the function that one is designing for I believe that it’s impossible to create anything more than a fortunate accident.
I could have done without the first two stories Eric. But the point was well taken. It may seem like you’re stating the obvious, but the obvious things become skewed over time. This serves as a reminder to the no-brainer things most of us forget.
@Dustin
Farmer stories do cultivate the mind.
[…] Ahh yes, what a great article “Stand Up For Your Rights”, explaining what it means to be a web designer. Finally something I can point interested folk at something that sums up the concept succinctly « Help choose the new 7 wonders of the world… […]
lol, good one
[…] Retirado daqui «So you want to be a web designer, eh? Well, that’s fine, just fine! There’s a lot to learn, but I’d be happy to get you started. First, we’ll talk about markup languages and semantics. Then we’ll spend a good deal of time on how CSS works and how it comapres to older forms of layout, plus a basic grounding in the nature of text flow and ‘limitless canvas’ flows. After that… “Hold on there, Poindexter. I want to be a web designer, not a computer scientist.» […]
Stand up for your rights…
Great reading! I have been the farmer/sculptor/designer/webdesigner way too many times when talking to people who come to me for advice on how they should get started on making websites.read more | digg story
…
There’s 13 minutes I’ll never get back…
is this article intentionally ambiguous? why should the author fear to make and argue a clear point? the farmer analogy in particular was poorly outlined. perhaps it was satire: but then the article leader is misleading. you can’t become a farmer without learning from experts and about the weather and planting seeds, or you’ll be a complete failure. so too, becoming a good web designer/developer involves a lot of hard work and experience. much of it includes learning from what others have done before. i agree individual creativity and motivation shouldn’t be stifled by hardline zealots calling themselves experts. it’s really up to the individual to sort through the BS and get the gems from people who have worthwhile things to pass onto their peers. unfortunately, this article teaches us nothing.
Two web developers in a room: “Want to go and see a movie?” I don’t know, who’s the projectionist?”
I can do a website. you guys can do it better. They’re both valid websites, and of course content is king. The beauty of the web is that it’s a democratic medium, the really good stuff rises to the top.
“Form follows function”
Without at least a reasonalble understanding of the function that one is designing for I believe that it’s impossible to create anything more than a fortunate accident.
- Jeremy Fields
Totally true. I also keep a quote from Jeff Raskin on my site:
“It is useful for designers…to understand the innards of the technology; otherwise, they have no way to judge the validity of assertions…that a given interface detail is not feasible.”
My point is that we teach our skills to others so that they can benefit from our knowledge. Our knowledge in this method usually comes from generations of innovations. With it we can innovate the processes and techniques of our craft by making testing our assertions against our ideas. Pretty simple.
The thing that furstrates me however is not the knowledge we pass on — that stuff is important and you can either learn from the past or re-invent the wheel on your own, nobody really cares. What gets me is the method by which we pass on such knowledge.
Modern society has a strong rooting in the monastic approaches to learning: that a teacher lectures and the students listen. The students then jump through hoops to prove they have retained what they were just told. It works because at the upper levels of education, the students are finally given the opportunity to apply their own ideas in tests against what they just learned… but it tends to institutionalize knowledge and make it very boring for the students as it takes so long to go through the whole process.
I myself have been a more pro-active learner — I go out and get my feet wet. I experiment and just become what I want to be. The difference I think between myself and the protagonist in your analogies is that I initiate the desire to learn the fundamental principles of the craft I am engaging in. I’ll start tinkering as a sculptor and immediately have a slew of questions that I’ll want answered. I’ll look up other craftsmen and question their wisdom for answers.
IMO this wasn’t much of an article. It’s just one self-indulgent analogy after another. I don’t even know what you were really trying to get at; I just have a clue as to what point you are trying to make with this piece. I think it could’ve been better if you provided a paragraph or two that outlined the basis of an argument.
Anyway, keep rocking. Vitamin kicks ass. :)
“Wax on — wax off.”
Cheers to that!
Brian wrote, “Whenever I work with designers I tell them, design it how you want it to look. Of course you need to pay attention to the business rules and the architecture, but design the site with passion in mind, not some mindless dribble about pixel-precision being ‘on the outs’.”
Suppose you want to place a half-page ad for a newspaper. In other words, an ad wider than it is high. Do you tell your designer, “Produce an ad with such-and-such information and make it look however you like” and then, when it comes back to you in a format appropriate for a bus stop ad (higher than it is wide), have him start reworking it? Or do you tell him up front what the ad is for and what the dimensions have to be, and have him start from there? Which approach do you think will waste less time and create less annoyance for both you and the designer?
I’m sure we agree on the answer to that one. So why should a designer similarly not know what the parameters are for designing for the Web, and take those into account from the start, rather than designing something however it pleases him, without regard to the effort and hackery that will then be needed to try to retrofit it to the medium for which it was intended?
Form follows function, but I have to agree with Brian here, that most web design today is giving the medium a bad name in the design industry, because it is often lacking the beauty that other forms like print and motion excel at.
Too many web designers, like Eric Meyer (dare I say), don’t know the graphic design side of web design. Sure, they make thousands of dollars and are successful for pitching the power of usabibility, accessibility, and functionality, but they often miss out on the beauty of good, true graphic design because they didn’t get a full education in DESIGN. Web designers themselves, without good graphic design education, knowledge, and practice, are no different than the protagonist of Eric’s story.
How many creative directors have you worked for that just decided “I’ll be a web designer now”? For myself: Too many. And the day I run my own firm, if you do web design, you better have an education in design.
@Largo Plazo
I mentioned business rules and architecture because there will always be some constraints. A very simple one to follow, is does the site at a bare minimum need to be viewable at 800×600 or 640×480. So, I’m not talking about throwing caution to the wind here. I’m talking about an honest reevaluation of the purpose behind why you design the way you do? Is it about the user, creativity, and passion, or is it to impress your college professor?
third world apricot said it best in his comment above. Learn the basic concepts driving the profession, and then sift through the BS. You will find that if you do, you might just have to step out of your “will this site design validate” comfort zone.
> true graphic design because they didn’t get a full education in DESIGN
Ever heard of self study and networking your graphic buddy friends
[…] I found this story here. I really enjoyed this “fictional” article by Eric Meyer, and the comments (where I found the tradesmen story - thanks, Dan! ) […]
Wax on, wax off. Then you can kick butt…
You can certainly tell this is an emotional issue for many. For me, it is hard to take anything for granted because the use of the Internet in general (and the Web in specific) is in a “primordial” state. Everything we do now is going to be built on or forgotten in a few years because someone always develops a “better way”. This really is an historic era but in time it will be like recalling the name of the team that won the Super Bowl twenty years ago. After a while it will only matter when a trivia game is being played.
I don’t know how anyone could say reading Eric’s article was a “waste of time”, most importantly because it’s such a negative phrase and hardly helpful. But that’s from my perspective. I read the article and quickly identified with the farmer/sculptor. Though I now teach the great unwashed how to use Dreamweaver, my undergrad degree is Music Education and I spent a good portion of my life teaching others the basics of an art form. As an example, I was always astounded when I would hear someone say, “Why teach the kids about a bunch of dead composers? Just let them sing some songs and have fun!” I imagine the field of “Edutainment” was born from such concepts.
However, I also can’t completely buy into the notion that one cannot be considered a designer of web pages unless s/he is able to recite chapter and verse from the XHTML specification pages. And, though I’ve worked in four universities where web delivery is very important, I have never heard the phrase “semantic web” from anyone and I’m looking forward to figuring out what it is.
At any rate, perhaps the article is in response to an observation of some people who expect to become successful in a pursuit without a certain work ethic and preparation. But, then again, learning to use technology hasn’t always been a “democratic” pursuit. There are many types of learning styles and for some it can be an expensive proposition. If you are a person who has more time than money you can now search the web for countless tutorials or dive into the collective knowledge of whole on-line communities. However, in the not-so-distant past you could get flamed by outraged technocrats who thought you might be asking a few too many questions without proper compensation.
I also wonder about the derisive use of the word “template”. Templates have been used for hundreds of years; thousands if you consider accepted norms of publishing to be templates. I personally don’t like some of the pages I see (MySpace is almost painful) but I am grateful that people are communicating in a way that was never possible.
Last thought: I was really irritated by the tone of some of the posts here when I started writing this. It took so long to set down what I was thinking that I feel much better now. Maybe that’s a problem when we have the ability to immediately post our comments. If we are forced to take our time to think clearly we tend not to be so judgmental or negative. What fun is that?
Bill Milhoan — agree in many respects.
I recently posted something to a livejournal group and got flamed by people taking 5 minutes of their life to tell me how much my idea sucked. It doesn’t hurt to be critical, but at least offer something — it’s too easy to just say, “that sucks,” and walk away. Anyone can do that.
While I didn’t really like the article, I did offer a way I thought it could’ve been better. Just an opinion and I don’t care if Eric takes it up or not, but at least I hope I wasn’t just wasting bandwidth and disk space by typing it all out.
[…] Read the whole thing: “Vitamin Features » Stand Up For Your Rights! ” on the original site, courtesy Eric Meyer […]
Forgot to check back in here… I still feel that people are looking at this in the wrong way! If you had a web page that people were abandoning after five seconds, you wouldn’t say that you had to educate and spread the word about how the 1% of users who stick with it come to love it and why, you’d improve the usability of the web site.
It’s the same with standards. I’m a convert and I’m glad I’ve taken the effort to learn how to use CSS for layout because it makes everything so much more maintainable, but I still feel that the journey isn’ t easy enough for most people to embark upon.
Philo pastry.
Some are mums who put plasters on scruffy knees. Some are paramedics. Some are nurses. Some are doctors. Some are Neuro Surgeons.
It really boils down to… the internet is a medium that everyone can enjoy. From the novice beginner to people like Eric.
But I guess Eric is talking about “professional”. People who sell design, not those who do it for fun. I agree that as professionals we should know as much as possible, at the same learning as you go is better than refusing to start until you have all the knowledge. Like Eric said… Here’s some corn, start with that.
O well… just a request… i wish we could get rid of Times New Roman.
Great text !
I cannot believe how many commentators here think that web site design is equivalent to drawing a web page without using the tools of the web.
Issigonis could design the Mini not because he could draw novel cars but because he was an inspired engineer who understood everything that was needed to make the Mini a successful car.
I’m not into flame wars and denigration but it seems obvious that those on this page who are critical of Eric’s piece are those that inspired him to write it.
“Oh, sure, whenever someone isn’t willing to quietly swallow your pretensions, you declare them unfit to join your holy order, is that it? The only people who can be designers are the ones who think just like you, right? The ones who play your little games and jump through the hoops you set up? You just keep stroking your ivory tower, okay? Just stop pretending that you know what makes a good designer, because it’s clear you’ve become completely dissociated from reality.”
Sorry, but this sounds like I stumbled into a 16 yr old’s rant about one of his teachers. Am I meant to identify with this rambling?
Looks like provocation :)
You can easily make absolutely controversial conclusions while reading.
But the discussion on the article is great exactly as the sequence of this )
Best regards
[…] Here’s a fun article on choosing Web Design as a profession showing the funny side of Eric Meyer. […]
Simple way to hire the best “web designer”?
Call up top 15 “Web Design” firms in your city and tell them you want to get a paper brochure designed…..
Most of them will say “YES”, those are print design firms masquerading as web designers, reject them all, print design concepts don’t work for web design, you will end up with dud site, like nearly 80% of all websites on the Internet, designed by “print design” experts.
Couple of the web design firms will say “NO” and tell you they specialize in web design, hire one of them!
Are you a doctor after reading a couple of books and buying some “doctor tools”? Then don’t call yourself a web designer just because you know how to play with dreamweaver. And don’t call yourself a graphic designer because you play with a cracked version of Photoshop, either.
[…] Stand Up For Your Rights von Eric Meyer. “So you want to be a farmer, eh?” - Wieder mal etwas aus der Lustig-weil-wahr Abteilung. […]
Really, though, it’s sad how prevalent that sort of mentality is in almost any field, not just in web design nowadays.
I’m a biochemistry major (web stuff is just a hobby of mine, I only read so much because anything I do, I like to do well), and as such I’m in a program with a lot of pre-med students. A lot of the pre-meds really are hard-working and try to learn the material, even when it’s dull and doesn’t seem very relevant. (I’m not pre-med, but I at least try to approach stuff similarly, though admittedly, with mixed success.)
About as many, though… well, to quote my organic chemistry lab’s professor summing up the attitude once, think - and sometimes even tell their professors, though phrased rather differently - “I don’t need to know this crap, give me my A so I can get into med school and be a doctor and make tons of money.”
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uxfamoa
I really liked so much the article because it “land you” at the reality, in the way that to get goals in life you have to know about thinks that you possibly don’t like, for example in the carreer or in your personal life.
The article also tell us that it’s not necessary to know so much things, only recommend us to find out what are necessary to know and that to be a good professional, is better to know a lot about a specific area than know few about many.
At the same time, the article invites to study hard to get goals in life and remains that great things are not easy to get.
Santiago Jaramillo
11 C
Great !!
so … I know something about PCs and basic guidelines for making web sites … psychology is my little name … colours are my hobby … does this mean I can get started ? :-)
did I mention I am also a creative person ?
[…] Thanks, Dan! I found this story here, which is a great “fictional” article by CSS Guru Eric Meyer. […]
[…] I found this story here. I really enjoyed this “fictional” article by Eric Meyer, and the comments (where I found the tradesmen story - thanks, Dan! ) […]
Dog Contact Tables For Myspace…
I don’t agree with you in 100%, but you covered some good points regarding this topic…
[…] Eric Meyer’s post in Think Vitamin made me chuckle. […]
[…] Vitamin Features » Stand Up For Your Rights! Ahh yes, what a great article “Stand Up For Your Rights”, explaining what it means to be a web designer. Finally something I can point interested folk at […]