You are not a Web Designer IF…
Since the term Designer is pretty generic these days, I will try to limit the topic of this article to web designers. So these next lines should define better the qualities and knowledge a web designer should have. This is just my opinion, if you think differently please share your thoughts.
You are not a Web Designer IF:
1. you don’t know what a PIXEL is
2. you don’t know what a mockup is
3. you don’t know what RGB or CMYK is and stands for
4. you don’t know what screen real estate is
5. you only design and never code
6. you don’t know the difference between vector and raster
7. you have only heard about Photoshop
8. you can’t name an alternative to Photoshop
9. you know some cool Photoshop filters
10. you know only a way of selection in Photoshop
11. you don’t know what DPI stands for
12. you don’t know what image formats are
13. you know only JPG and GIF
14. you know some cool effects in Front Page
15. you don’t know what a DTD is
16. you use only HTML Transitional DTD
17. you don’t know the difference between HTML and XHTML
18. you don’t know what CSS is
19. you are inclined of using inline CSS
20. you don’t know anything about typography
21. you don’t know what a serif is
22. you’ve never heard about W3C
23. you know to code only in Dreamweaver
24. you test your web pages only in Internet Explorer
25. you don’t read web design blogs
26. you don’t use wireframes
27. you have a Mac. ( you are not necessarily a designer if you own a mac )
28. you have no knowledge of design history ( although this is something that can be learned between projects 
)
Are you?
My reason for this post was to better define the thin line between a web designer wannabe (newbie) and a mature web designer. Please share your ideas, things that I forgot to put on this list.
Cheers!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickbis/3438351579/sizes/o/
Andy Gongea is a passionate UI/UX designer with a great appetite for technology and trends. Currently he owns, a future wife, a loan that comes with a monthly fee and some strange ideas about user interface and user interaction. Cheers!86 Responses to “You are not a Web Designer IF…”
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Woop, I passed the test with flying colours. Go me!
You should add somethig about not knowing what Flash is.
What’s wrong to code in Dreamweaver, it’s actually a really good text editor if you turn of the preview window with built in support for HTML tagging, CSS attributes and etc..
Yay!
I’m only 16 but I’m officially a ‘mature web designer’
Great post… a lot of those points made me laugh!
Thanks
You are not a designer if you cannot draw with pencil !
Yeah !
I agree with many of these, but disagree with some. I consider myself an intermediate web designer, but I didn’t know a couple of these things. I believe you have to understand what you NEED to understand and be WILLING to learn and expand and become better.
Just my two cents
I have heard about serif but I don’t know this exactly. So I’m not x)
Awesome – I passed all! Like Oliver Treed up there, I am young but “mature”
Thanks for the quick post – I love the comments suggesting about AJAX, ActionScript, one layer PSD’s, and FTP’s…great ideas.
Lotta people crying a river because you called them out with this list. *lol* Kinda glorious. TOO many people think of themselves as designers and developers nowadays. Everyone and their mom thinks they can make websites, charge for it, and they call themselves “freelance.” The titles are abused, and I’d say more than half of the so called web site creators out there today are just hacks.
Like some individuals here I appreciate your intent, but I highly disagree with many of the items on this list. Your opinion regarding what constitutes a designer and a wannabe are highly subjective, and you don’t seem to understand the “fine line” between a designer and a programmer. Seems like you have a little bit to learn yourself.
I’m an attorney with no formal education about design or arts and passed all the questions above, scoring . I used to say I’m intermediate web designer, can I call myself mature designer?
Well,I got a long way to go…
Just one question: how to add your blog into my rrs reader, thanks so much.
This list mostly covers the technical programming side of being a designer. According to the list many programmers I know would pass with flying colors. However their designs, if you can call them that, make one want to crawl in a hole a die of pixel poisoning.