I think the most meaningful saying I can come up with to sum up any software ever made or that will be made is:

"Anyone can learn to use a software given enough time, however creativity comes from within, without creativity you just have a software taking up hard drive space.

In a nut shell, creativity can NOT be taught, we are born with it. because of this it baffles me at the extent of all the people fighting to try & get into the graphics design fields. I'm sure allot of you have noticed how overly saturated the market is already & the impact it has on design standards.

$500.00 designs are now being done for $10.00 with crappy quality, & the sad thing is the consumer is buying it because of the fast turn around & minimal investment (UNBELIEVABLE) ~ Why? because there are too many people trying to make fast cash today thinking that design is easy.

I think that 75% of the fast cashers end up learning within the first 6 months that they won't get rich off it, Learn within the first 12 months (1 yr.) that it's not the right career path, & the ones who actually had some creativity / muti-tasking ability / software skill that make it to the 2nd year end up realizing how much the industry is truly messed up & what kind of money they could be making now if it wasn't for the new set of 13 MILLION people wanting to be a designer thinking it's easy money now.

All-n-all I would go as far as to say that maybe 1% out of the 13 Million each year trying to make fast cash in design actually stick it all out & become a genuine designer (And that number may be high).

I suppose the bottom line is that the design industry is getting worse, not better, especially now that outsourcing has become popular. Seriously though, how many in some of the large technologically advanced societies can afford to make $5.00 - $100.00 per week to live off of (The amount most make in India & can live comfortable according to their standards of living)? Of course India is just one of many countries venturing onto the world wide web & striving to base a career off anything they can muster.

There are still those companies that choose Quality over quantity & cheap prices, they are the ones keeping the design industry from totally collapsing on itself.

A good rule of thumb is, If one needs to infringe copyrights by taking others work without permission or using pre-made clipart & implementing it into their design proposal, then they are NOT DESIGNERS!!!!!!!!

A true designer creates everything them self from scratch & has the creative ability to make their own UNIQUE clipart if needed.

Not to sound too harsh, but if you find yourself lacking creativity & are unable to create designs 100% from scratch, you might just be in the wrong industry & should seek a different line of work.

This post was meant to be an eye opener & reminder of how messed up the design industry is today (NOT as a personal attack). If you find yourself feeling offended or upset, You may be in the wrong industry as well

I just want to reach out & pat all the designers on the back that have made it past the 2nd year out there, I, Myself am coming up on my 3rd year (Still a newbie). Though I'm sure, those of you that have been around a while can concur on my above comments & may even have more you would like to vent in this thread to let the rest of the world know how you feel.

Keep up the good work designers!!!! I wish you all the best of success!!

a similar thing could be said of people producing web sites that don't know how to code properly. interestingly enough your own site has 240 errors ( http://tinyurl.com/5joe7b ) ...

Excellent post Eric. I couldn't agree with you more if I tried.

And of course the problem isn't exclusive to the design portion of web development.

"Article writers" who can't string a one sentence post together and make it coherent.

"Copy righters" where there own sight has moor speelnig errurs and grammatical mistaken than you can shake a stick at.

and the list goes on.

Originally Posted by davemies

a similar thing could be said of people producing web sites that don't know how to code properly. interestingly enough your own site has 240 errors ( http://tinyurl.com/5joe7b ) ...

I do agree that using Joomla was a bad choice, you'll notice most of those errors are variables that were dynamically generated by the CMS. I'm not a developer, I'm a designer

While the small handful of 12 or so errors that can be corrected by one that only knows xhtml/Css, I find myself being lazy with it seeing that the site still displays properly in IE6/IE7 - FF2.0/3.0 - Safari - Netscape - Opera.

In addition, I find it funny that w3c seems to change consistently, yet still finds itself a coders back-up checker. Why do we even have an <embed></embed> if W3c won't validate it, you have to use Java as a work around when embedding flash now. too funny.

Again, I'm not a coder / developer... Just a designer (Hinse why I posted in the Graphics forum)

I do Fully agree that all industries have similar issues though.

Originally Posted by davemies

a similar thing could be said of people producing web sites that don't know how to code properly. interestingly enough your own site has 240 errors ( http://tinyurl.com/5joe7b ) ...

I think to be fair to Eric, Scorpion Design is a design agency NOT developers / coders.

I work with a fairly talented designer whose coding skills are non-existent.

"I think to be fair to Eric, Scorpion Design is a design agency NOT developers / coders."
Chris - they make websites (listed in their design services), it's lame to say that they're just designers and can't be expected to code properly, though i agree the errors are minor. i wouldn't necessarily expect good coding skills from designers, but i would expect the to work with someone who did have good coding ability, at least if they are offering web design. i know this sounds like a criticism - and in a way it is, though small one - but i though it was an interesting point and (the coding thing) was a parallel to the 'designer' wannabes.

i'm certainly not a professional designer, though i do provide design services on a basic level to those that would otherwise be left with either something that looked hideous or was overpriced.

i'm not sure i entirely agree with the clipart usage thing, the same way as a good designer might source (quality) stock photo they might also source good clipart (if that's not an oxymoron!). Sure any designer worth their salt should be able to produce something good from scratch, but i would argue that not all of them might have such innate drawing ability, at least for organic things say like horses you can be a designer but not necessarily an excellent illustrator, though of course it's good if you are. and, of course, you should be able to code too!

incidentally i wonder what kind of graphic designers these were http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...24/nogc124.xml

Dear Davemies,


Ok, There seems to be a little confusion to what the difference between design & development is, so I'll post a definition.

Web Developer / Programmer

A web developer / Programmer is responsible for programming the functionality of a web site. So while a requirements analyst is tasked with determining what a web site should do, the web developer figures out how it is going to do it and then writes the necessary programming code. Much of this programming code is behind the scenes and not visible to the user.

However, a web developer may also be responsible for the code that the user sees. This is the HTML/DHTML and Javascript that make up most of the web pages you interact with in your web browser.

Web Designer

A web designer is similar to a graphic designer. In fact, many graphic designers are web designers and vice versa. A web designer focuses on the user interface. They are responsible for layout, color palettes, and sometimes usability. Web designers often develop some skills to enable them to include certain features in the interface such as roll-overs or dynamic menus.


Graphics Designer

Web-based applications have brought graphic designers closer to software development projects than ever before. Because the buttons, menus, and other screen elements of a web page are not standardized, there is enormous opportunity for a graphic designer to influence how a site will look. This is often tied in to the branding efforts of a web site. As such, the graphic designer is tasked with deciding how best to portray the values of a company through the use of color and layout.

With that said, I hope it sheds a little light on the differences.. Designers don't do php/asp/c++ (which are where over 200+ of the errors where you kindly pointed out).. At best designers may do some basic xhtml/css , like the css/html templates one might buy & then integrate into their PHP/ASP cms's

Big difference & totatlly different field. & in your research to discredit me you would have also noticed in my services page that I specifically STATE the use of an OPENSOURCE cms such a JOOMLA if anyone requests a more dynamic & complex website.

At any rate, I wasn't intending this thread to become an argument or a discrediting feature, Sorry if I offended you with my original post, however this is the Graphics Forum, not the programmers forum & I will NEVER be nor offer any PROGRAMMING services.

I'm a DESIGNER!

I think the "obscene" bit of that is the cost of it. £14,000!?!?!?!?!?!?
(for the murcans that's $27,700 give or take ) WTF is more appropriate than OGC.

So, what would my 3 minutes with Illustrator be worth ?? http://www.webmaster-talk.com/genera...tml#post710440

I mean, I've used 2 colours and I changed case on one letter

I've actually seen logo's like the one you posted in that thread sell anywhere between $250.00 - $800.00 easy (Depending on revisions to get to the point it is now).

Not to shabby at all Chris

Though The way you coded that logo may be questionable (JOKE)!!!

Given your definitions, I don't fit neatly into any of them ! I consider myself a designer because I DO design websites as well as doing other graphics. BUT, I do all my own HTML/CSS and have done so for over 10 years. There just isn't a cut and dried line to say a designer can't and doesn't code and vice versa. PHP, .NET, that type of programming is not my forte however, that, to me, is the realm of the real 'developer'. I can do some minor javascript when I need to, but that's it. My days of hard-core programming are long behind me for many reasons.

LadynRed, you may have missed this part:

With that said, I hope it sheds a little light on the differences.. Designers don't do php/asp/c++ (which are where over 200+ of the errors where you kindly pointed out).. At best designers may do some basic xhtml/css , like the css/html templates one might buy & then integrate into their PHP/ASP cms's

I have to agree that basic xhtml/css normally becomes common knowledge to the designer that ventures into web ready graphics whole heartedly.

As far as the 3 definitions go, you're a web designer LadynRed.. the Layout / user interface aspects of web design consist of xhtml/css & Graphics

Though thats all I really know too when it comes to coding. As far as php/asp and all the other technical languages (Like joomla's foundation), BLAH, gives me a headache just thinking about them

There are some hybrid designer/programmers out there that can do both, but it's still 2 separate fields. Most companies even put them both in totally different departments, segregated from each other.

PHP and all that jazz makes my eyes go bad, its like maths at school, it starts, my brain switches off, BUT as a designer and yes thats what I am not a coder lol, I DO however need to have a working knowledge of how basic coding works simply so I know that my designs will work within a webpage, color theory in design is two different things when applied to the web and or print.

To be a good designer or a coder requires time, skills and of course knowledge. As in anything the more you apply in knowledge gives you a better all round way of seeing things.

I'm coming up to my third year in designing graphics for the web but had dealings with other aspects of the art industry for a number of years. And I still consider myself very green, it's only really in the past six months I have begun to push myself to acheive a better standard of work and really start to learn the aspects of good design. And I have a long way to go yet.