Developers, Developers, Developers

Developers, Developers, Developers

Stuart Horton-Stephens | 11/03/2010

In alot of web agencies there is a ‘larger than there ought to be’ gap in communication between developers and designers. Its something that has been happening since the dawn of web time, something that may or may not ever be rectified. The issue is that you are dealing with two different characters. The uber cool web designer type with iphone and latte attached to hip. And the pony tailed developer with fantasy obsessions involving Dr Who female assistants.

Designers are brought up to believe in negative and positive space, colour theory and interesting fonts. They pride themselves in creating work that is pixel perfect to the point that if they could they would split a pixel in two. They love colour and spatial theories and get physically excited by interesting photos of architecture. Yes its true.

Developers care about numbers and things working properly and easily and simply.

This is where the problems arise. The creative hand is trying hard to work with the numerical hand but they just don’t want to be shaking. So what happens is that the designer produces a ‘masterpiece’, proudly boasts about it to his peers and mother, then hands it over to the developer. The developer then goes about ‘fucking it up’, introducing live text where it could (and should) be graphic type. Images don’t line up and those pesky drop shadows suddenly disappear...

I am being facetious of course. There are a couple of developers out there who are incredibly cautious and wary of the creative hand. And they don’t wish to bite it....

tags: Web Development ,  Web Design