Around 2012, I embarked my journey of freelance. At that time, most the jobs coming from local advertising agencies, doing digital campaign & microsite(Not many people want to build products in Kuala Lumpur, ’cause product is expensive at that time).
During the beginning of the journey in 2012, I work closely with the designers, they’re the one who in charge of the front end and scopes. Coming from the background of server scripting(.NET, PHP) that time, learned a lot of typography, colour, layout, the details of the design and most importantly CSS.
How the developer and designer work together at that time?
Designer prepares developer the photoshop, Ai.
Developer code accordingly.
Designer review & revise.
Developer revises and amend.
This cycle continues until the result meets the client’s expectation.
My works involve HTML slicing, turn HTML into Wordpress theme files. The pain begins with HTML slicing…
File Size
Once received the Ai web mockup which is 2GB of 5 artboards. Imagine every revision which contains on the Ai file. Not forget to mention Photoshop, it contains layers of the visual assets with different visibility and revision too.
Versioning
Everyone knows about the versioning, few of them really look into it seriously. For code, we have git, but for the designer, this is the gap where the new product needs to fill in.
The wars between developer & designer don’t end here. The wars just begin with graphic, then with animation and so on. Sometimes designer wins, sometimes developer wins. Most of the designers are neglect of viable of a new design/feature, while developers always lack design sense.
2 solutions to end this war:
1. Designer learn to code
2. Developer learn to design
