Depending on whom you talk to, there is a difference between a web designer and a web developer. These titles are a bit fuzzy in definition, but in general: A web designer uses Photoshop (or whatever) to lay out a web page. After approval, that web page is sliced up and sent off to a web developer who ties it together in HTML and CSS.

The major problem

I feel that a designer needs to have a very good grasp of HTML and CSS. For starters, it keeps them out of the trouble of designing something that isn’t going to be easy (or possible) to build in HTML. More importantly though, there is still a lot of aesthetic control in the process of taking a comp into HTML, no matter how much time you spend trying to be perfectly detailed for the developer.

When a designer and developer are working hand in hand to create a site, there is a lot more work that has to be done. The designer has to redline his work (mapping which pixel goes where), they have to design every new page design in Photoshop (I do a lot design on the fly while I’m coding), and various other steps that, I feel, are oftentimes overkill. The ability to cut out one more meeting or process makes us a lot more efficient.

The ideal solution

In a perfect world, a designer and developer would work together to create the best solution; both would be fairly literate in each other’s job description. I do use traditional developers, but I use them for MySQL, PHP, Ruby on Rails, custom CMS systems — not coding the shell of our sites. I control the HTML and CSS, it speeds up the design process and helps me to create comps that can be coded exactly the way they look. I feel this is the best solution, and it’s definitely the fastest, easiest one we’ve found.

There are times when it’s easier to work as a team. But for a lot of projects (even larger projects), we feel one person can do two jobs faster than two people can do two jobs.

Beating a dead horse

Most designers agree that to be a good web designer, they need to know the basics of HTML. However, if you’re not using HTML, you aren’t going to know it well. HTML and CSS have changed substantially in the past few years. I’d rather see developers spend their time and expertise on complex, industry-changing projects. That’s the sort of thing they aren’t going to have the time to do if they’re spending their day writing in a language that any qualified designer should be able to do for them.