In my suburban Connecticut high school, there was an English teacher who was fond of saying, “The reason to study Shakespeare is so that you can be the one person in the audience who laughs at the jokes.” A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to see The Merchant of Venice staged. Mr. Decker was almost right — there were three audience members laughing at the jokes.
Understanding Shakespeare gave me a larger context to understand both the English language and theater. While I am far from a virtuoso of iambic pentameter, I do now have the skills to understand a play and discuss it with some level of intelligence. I can just about guarantee I will never write a play myself, but the understanding I have gives me a level of confidence and, hopefully, makes me a more interesting person.
Frequently, when I travel and speak, I meet designers who say they “only do the design.” While I appreciate the desire to stay in the world of the visual, in the context of today’s design environment, this attitude can be extremely limiting. In the contemporary digital environment, only doing the “design” is like reciting Shakespeare without understanding the context or the words.
Understanding the Context of Your World
Twenty years ago, “digital design” for the most part meant laying out content in Pagemaker or Quark and sending it to a print bureau. The visual aspect of design occurred on a screen instead of a pasteboard. I was in college at the time, but I remember a generation of designers struggling to make the transition. For some, it was like their whole world shifted under their feet and everything they knew was fading into irrelevance.
Today, another shift has occurred. Digital content is now, most often, laid out for screen with a number of scripting languages. HTML is used to format content. Cascading Style Sheet language is used to describe how the elements of content marked up with HTML will appear on the screen. Javascript is used to add a layer of interactivity. Designers who have not learned these technologies have become wholly dependent on those who do to carry out their design vision. Often, like in the children’s game “telephone,” the vision gets diluted as the message is translated from team member to team member.
The fact is, designers who learn to code will take back much of that control — and fully understand the “Shakespeare” that is their daily work environment.
The digital context is much different than even the electronic print-layout metaphors of 20 years ago. There are few reliable WYSIWYG interfaces akin to the old Pagemaker. User interaction makes WYSIWYG impossible, as elements of your design have different states. Another measure that complicates today’s digital environment is the multitude of devices that are used to access content. Differing screen sizes, input devices, and even processors can vary the user experience and need to be considered by the designer — yet, the designer who only “does the design” cannot impact any of these elements.
You May Not be a Coder, But You Can Code
The one way designers can take control back over their designs is by learning to code. No, I am not telling you to go back to college and get a degree in computer science. You don’t need a PhD in English to understand Shakespeare. I am telling you to become code literate, and the only way to do so is to code. Learning to code is not only an investment in the future of your design career, but also the only way you can impact your design and the new ecosystem that affects how users experience it. That’s why I teach code on Skillfeed, Shutterstock’s new e-learning platform that hosts hundreds of courses on coding, among many other things.
Speaking the language of code, understanding the metaphors, and learning the processes used to manage code-based projects will not only allow you, as a designer, to be a full participant on the project team, but also to optimize your own work for the ecosystem. You increase your value by learning code skills, and thereby become more valuable on the design market. The frequent misunderstanding when I speak to groups of designers is that they think I want to them to become developers; the reality is that I want them to become good consumers of development. Understanding biology makes you a better consumer of medicine. This is no different.
Some designers do catch the coding bug and take their skills further. A number of freelancers I know competently service both sides of the design equation — creating beautiful designs and serviceable code to make the design function. Whether that’s your goal, or you have a more modest goal of being a more valuable designer, learning to code is key to your journey.
Don’t Let Fear Hold You Back
Despite the benefits of learning to code, many don’t because of fear. The primary fear that I see is that programming is too difficult and they will fail. The fact is, despite the mystique commonly promoted by developers, just about anybody can learn to program.
I certainly won’t argue that learning doesn’t take effort. It does. Programming is hard work and learning it is not an easy road — but it is possible. Coding is not the domain of the archetypal pocket-protector sporting nerd. It is increasingly within the domain of many professions, including designers.
What’s Next
The folks at Shutterstock were nice enough to ask me to help you begin this journey. So, here’s the plan.
My next post will start you down the road of learning HTML — the language I recommend that you (and all new developers) learn first. You’ll pick up the basics quickly, and will be able to produce results on the screen as you read the first tutorial. This post is enhanced by my Skillfeed course “HTML and CSS for Beginners.”
Next, we’ll move on to CSS. Future articles will include starting you off on Javascript and then on to a look at mobile development. I hope you’re going to join me on this journey. I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to be your teacher.
See you next time, and we’ll begin the journey together. Questions? Email me at mark@learntoprogram.tv.
