“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” -Niels Bohr

And what’s a web designer’s job description anyway? Lately, I’ve been asking myself this question, especially at this time when the demand for specialization gets greater and greater. In the early 2000’s when I initially got started in the web, it was easy. The prevailing identity on the Internet was that of a webmaster. If you were called a webmaster, you were like a magician; the practitioner of an esoteric and novel art form. Everyone respected that and knew what it meant, even if they knew not what it was all about. A webmaster in 2000 did what a jack of all trades does today, from designing the Photoshop template of a site to administering the database of the CMS. That, as we all know, was not a good proposition. Do you remember the first designs to surface the internet and how hideous they were? Thank god the graphic designers took an interest in the web and resuscitated visual goodness.

Today however, the playing field has shifted. True, there are still coders out there who do it all. But is it efficient? Are they happy? And most importantly, are they good? I cannot agree as the layers of complexity in web design increase. There needs to be a division of labor for truly powerful builds to come alive. And each specialist has his or her place. So in search of truth I posted a question on LinkedIn to see what other designers and developers had to say. I received a decent number or replies and with the exception of a few, most tended to say the same. (more…)