This fall marks my 25th year designing and building websites. It started in Mr. Hoehne’s computer science class as a freshman in high school – writing HTML in Notepad. My process for building websites today is not too different. I still write HTML in a text editor – but now that text editor has autocomplete, […]
Building custom layouts in the WordPress block editor
Over the last several years, WordPress has introduced—and continues to iterate on—the Gutenberg block editor, full-site editing, and block themes. I’ve largely avoided full-site editing and block themes until recently. My thought was: why change when I have a workflow and tools that work? My workflow/tools included building classic themes while relying heavily on the […]
Should designers be coders? (v2.0)
I’ve talked about this in the past on this blog. I was reminded of this debate from a past professor who re-blogged a post by Frank Chimero. So, should designers be coders? The answer is, “Yes, to an extent.” I say ‘to an extent’, because we can’t expect a web designer to be able to […]
Designers don’t make things look ‘pretty’
What do designers do? Make things ‘pretty’ and ‘put a new coat of paint on something’, right? Wrong. A designer is someone who communicates visually through various mediums. This could be through print design, web design, and especially wayfinding design (the design of directional signs in our environment). The end result is hopefully something that […]
Should designers know how to code?
This debate recently came up in the web design blogosphere in the last week or so. It all started with a tweet heard ’round the world by Elliot Jay Stocks. Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse. – elliotjaystocks There have been […]