Should web designers know how to code?

Colleague Kevin Conboy on why coding skills are important for web design:

Your first instinctual reaction (as mine would be), is of course going to be that learning HTML is not learning web design. And of course – of course – that’s true. Just because you know Flash or HTML does not mean you’re a designer. I would never be brain-dead enough to suggest such a thing. The visual and strategic aspects of design are always more important than the technical ones – it’s just that the technical skills should exist alongside all of that to effectively uphold your decisions. This has been true of design as a discipline for decades.

The full article is on Alternate.org.

Vote for Kevin’s panel proposal for SXSW here.

Tools of the Trade

Technology and I get along very, very well, but when I need to do some serious thinking, these are my weapons of choice:

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Large plain-page Moleskines with Pilot G2 .07 pens. You can see that I’m about to start a new one.