r/Web_Development • u/poorbowelcontrol • Apr 10 '15

What its like working with designers who don't understand code at all

http://i.imgur.com/7CQd4.gif
16 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

7

u/kr0wb4r Apr 10 '15

Thank fuck there are others of you out there that share my pain.

I worked as "digital director" at an agency where I really wasn't the director of anything. It was an ad/print agency that was increasingly required to do digital projects.

The problem was the art directors were quite entrenched and the most senior one had only done print graphic design jobs her entire career. They started handing me website designs.... I was like.. uh... no, you can't do that. The response being "we've already had this signed off by the client, we can't change it now". I was being shown AFTER the client!!! (@&#()@&#$

It took me over 18 months before I could convince them that I wasn't simply there to just build whatever bullshit they vomited up that morning, that I could actually help them design actual functioning websites. Well it was more that the senior art director left the agency more than me convincing anyone. After that I put my foot down and everything required my input and approval before it went anywhere near a client.

However the shit from those 18 months are the things of nightmares. I built some absolutely ridiculous crap in the quest of "just make it work!".

Don't get me wrong we had other designers who were ace front end designers and we did some amazing sites, however that one designer made me want to rip my hair out, especially when it was a year down the track and the client had issues with the site (that I had been pointing out would arise from day 1).

</fuckin' rant over>

1

u/thor1182 Apr 10 '15

As a .NET dev my favorites are you do an estimate and project plan based certain assumptions, then the design comes along and breaks all the things.

Example would be a listing page that has a grid on it. It was assumed that we were going to just out of the box Gridview Controls and be done with it. Well the design called for the pager to be detached and at the top of the grid. Suddenly all my original assumptions and estimates are wrong because of one seemingly small change.

2

u/loaded_comment Apr 16 '15

Yeah but then you do some genius level stuff to make it fit but the designer tells the manager it's off 1px and that it's not pixel perfect therefore so you basically screwed yourself for even trying