As initially irritated as I was to see that there was going to be a prequel Star Trek movie made… the press that has been coming through the interwebs have successfully gotten me more and more excited for its release.
Now the Trek movie poster has found its way online …. Awesome!
The title speaks for itself: I’m a designer, not a coder. Then why is it that every job posting I read requires that their art director/creative director is able to write and edit their own HTML, PHP, XML, and of course “action scripting and SEO a plus!” Excuse me? Correct me if I’m wrong here, and know you will, why on earth would you want your senior level designer worrying, nay, writing their own code?
In my last post, I did admit that it is each designer’s responsibility in this web design world we live in, that he or she can at least understand code and its implications to their design: “Being a well-rounded designer does not consist solely of you mastering photo selection and grids, being able to discuss your design with a coder and how they both interact is paramount.” However, that does not mean the ability to write/edit code while the front or back end coder is say, taking a 2 hour smoke break again, or, on their fifth hour of World of Warcraft with their “friends” from Vietnam. Or, not hiring a coder at all. It simply means you can have an intelligent conversation about the code needed to assemble your design, and somewhere down the line, the conversation forks, the designer’s head starts to hurt and the coder returns to his lair.
Personally, I am taking things to the next level professionally. I have indeed returned to school, after a mere fourteen year hiatus, and obtaining my Web Development certificate at a local university. HTML, XML, PHP and MySQL will be, hopefully, pounded into my brain, thusly, giving me that proverbial leg up on the competition. This does not mean I will be hired as a coder, it simply means I have a background and, with all luck, a very good understand of code, what it is capable of doing, and hopefully, writing my own code when and where needed. This does not negate the idea of having an in house coder, never has, never will.
Of course you’ll say, “But Andrew, I’m a designer and I am fully versed in all aspects of code AND designing. What do you have to say to that?” I say bugger off! You are either one of two people: 1. Graduated within the past five years with a web/design degree and your schedule was filled with coding/web classes because that is the state of design schools these days, or 2. You are a freak of nature and must be shot.
Okay, I might have been a bit harsh back there, let me explain. “Back in my day…” (I’m balling my fists up now and shaking them violently at you) there was print. Plain and simple. Brochures, posters, logos and good old mailers. AOL was barely alive and Prodigy was a gleam in someone’s forward thinking eye. Print people taught themselves, in most cases, what they needed to know about this new Information Highway, using their print skills and diving into web jobs they new hardly anything about. I was one of them. In fact, my first web job was with our one and only Stephen Johnson. Hi Stephen. As scary as it might sound, for those of you who know him, he was my first introduction to the world of web design. I still cry at night.
I digress…
I have met and worked with many brilliant coders and amazing designers, however, I have rarely met the brood of the two, where in one person was fluent in both mediums. It has happened, but you want your coders to code and your designers to design. Simple as that. If you have cross-over, count your lucky stars and get back to work.
Back to Warcraft…. I mean work.
So I got to thinking the other day .. I love blogging about the geekiness I find online, and after reviewing the traffic that I have gotten on the site over the last few months, it would seem that at least a few of you enjoy reading about the geekiness I find online.
Blog traffic is a very sought after commodity. It establishes credibility, let’s face it, no one at i09.com is really all that knowledgable about sciFi, and could they be anymore negative about everything they see? So why do we put faith in what they say??? becuase they get almost a million page views per month …
Same with any of the gawker media portals. Wired, Reuters and other sites have “genuine” journalists who make the real content that ends up disected onto other blogs, so they kind of come with their own credibilty.
This all got me thinking though … who has more credibilty then all of them … WE do…
That’s right, we have the real credibility, becuase we are the unknown masses who give these sites the traffic they need to gain thier credibility. We are the ones who have seen every Star Wars movie 400 times. We are the ones who can quote any episode of Star Trek. We are the ones who can tear down and rebuild a computer in less time then a Green Beret can field strip his m-16. We are the ones who make the geek news, so why shouldn’t we be the ones to report on it.
I want to form a coalition of Geeks. UNKNOWN geeks. Sorry Leo Laporte .. Sorry Tom Merritt .. Sorry Rafe Needleman… I respect you all, but your views are now tainted by the man. I want geeks who answer to no one, who will tell it like it is, and who want to be apart of what could become the largest online geek community with a voice..
If you’re a geek (computer, scifi, science, art, whatever … ) and you want to start contributing to a whole new type of online blog, let me know.
Individually we are nobody, but as a mob… we are force to be reckoned with …