Left Brain, Right Brain
By Amit Asaravala
Although once responsible for such page elements as color, layout, and typography—in other words, "the way things look"—more and more designers are finding it difficult to define their roles in today's Web team. Job descriptions in this field now require applicants to have strong HTML skills in addition to traditional artistic foundations. Some even require JavaScript experience. And on any given day, a designer might find that he or she is not only responsible for creating the look of a navigation bar, but also for producing the style sheets and scripts that will power the rollover effects in that bar—a duality that would have seemed anomalous only a few years ago.
This line blurring surrounding professional responsibilities is also evident in the tools of the trade. Adobe's ImageReady and Macromedia's Fireworks have long allowed users to generate HTML and JavaScript code after the graphics have been created. Dreamweaver, which is arguably an authoring and production tool, can now be found in the design sections of most buyers' guides. Even Photoshop, perhaps the most traditional design tool of all (with the exception of the paintbrush), will be able to output entire Web pages when version 6.0 is released.
Part of the reason that the duties of a Web designer are so hard to define is that the definition of design itself has morphed to mean more than making things look the way they look. These days, design seems to encompass the entire process of creation. When we began planning this issue, the editors and I initially envisioned an issue centered on visual design.
