005 - Should Designers Code?

In this episode: Anson shares some of his wet humor, Adam was converted to a developer, Brijan thinks code is boring, Geof plays a terrible devil's advocate and everyone wants to be an MC.

Please note that the opinions expressed here are not that of Rally Interactive and any possible reference to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental. Also, we have no idea what we are talking about.

Send feedback to [email protected] or http://twitter.com/rallybanter

# Side project: Designfacts.org

- Made by Shane Bzdok

- Launched March 22

- 137 facts about our industry

- Check it out! http://designfacts.org

# Mentioned and discussed on the show

Special thanks: Gene Ross (https://twitter.com/generosss)

When should a designer code or not?

- Don't need to be specialized programmers

- Adam used to be a designer

- Went to school as a designer

- Analytical, logical mind…

- Originality is difficult

- Priority: Having something that's real

- Ornamentation as design

- Flash design, approach to design in 2008

- R.I.T. (http://www.rit.edu)

- Designers considering Page A to Page B?

- Design without thought to the system

- Transition glasses (http://goo.gl/v5seNf)

How far to take programming as a designer?

- Designers writing front-end code

- Django web framework (https://www.djangoproject.com)

- Learn how HTML, CSS works, start small

- Tweak something that's already built

- Designers taking care of CSS nitpicks

- Detail is tedious, but not hard

- Well then what are programmers going to do?

- Designers should care about what the real thing is

- Having a great PSD is useless

- Shane Mielke (http://www.shanemielke.com)

- Jared Kroff (https://twitter.com/jaredkroff)

- Bryan James (http://bryanjamesdesign.co.uk)

- "If i want to do something cool… why not do it all myself?"

Will learning to code kill a designers creativity?

- Maybe should actually design for medium? Not making fine art…

- Time/cost tradeoff

- Understanding what's easy and what isn't

- The Ribbon™ (http://beta.rallyinteractive.com)

- When to use WebGL…

- "Design should be problem solving, not decoration"

- "Blindly shotgunning creativity"

- Regarding Dribbble and validation

- Utah Rebound. What state are you in? (https://dribbble.com/shots/69556-Utah)

- What is Software Design?

- Learn from the people around you

- Design to Development? Development to Design?

- Responsive design/adaptive design

- Multiple screen sizes on iOS

- Mobile layout on desktop is lame

- Media queries are easy, hard to do well

- Desktop design at 1600px to mobile design…

- Developers end up needing to figure out everything in-between

- Don't sacrifice design decisions to developers

- What is the logic behind the design?

- Prototype different screen sizes with code

- Why does a design work?

- Why try to convince anybody of this?

Advice for new designer regarding code?

- Everyone should learn to program in school

- Benefit in the long term

- Start small, start with the basics, put text on the screen

- Never too late

- Pay for Anson's coffee and he will teach you to program

——

# Adam Luptak

Developer at Rally interactive and Indian food eating extraordinaire.

http://twitter.com/_luptak

# Anson Schall

Freelancer, hyphenator and birthday cake typographer.

http://twitter.com/ansonschall

# Brijan Powell

Freelance Interactive Designer working out of the Rally office and motorcycle riding hellion.

http://twitter.com/brijanp

# Geof Crowl

Designer at Rally Interactive and connoisseur of fine italics.

http://twitter.com/rectangular