{"id":318,"date":"2008-08-20T17:08:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-20T22:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2008\/web-designers-are-not-button-designers\/"},"modified":"2008-08-20T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2008-08-20T22:09:15","slug":"web-designers-are-not-button-designers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2008\/web-designers-are-not-button-designers\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Designers are Not Icon Designers!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently got a call from someone wanting to know what I thought about various image editing programs in terms of their abilities to make buttons:<\/p>\n<p><img src='https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/button-tower.gif' alt='shopping-cart-icons' style=\"float: right; margin: 10px;\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;Stef, what program do you think I should use to create buttons for my websites? One buddy tells me he likes Corel Draw and another guy is big on Adobe Fireworks. What do you use?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My answer to this question is simple: <\/p>\n<p><strong>Web designers should not be making buttons.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Today a web designer&#8217;s job is much different from it was just say 5-6 years ago. Once upon a time, web designers were typically just graphic designers moving into web design because that&#8217;s where the money was. It still is by the way. Anyway &#8230; <\/p>\n<p>These days web design as a profession and skill set has evolved into it&#8217;s own beast. Web designers have many skills that go way beyond ordinary design:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HTML<\/li>\n<li>CSS<\/li>\n<li>Usability<\/li>\n<li>Site architecture and SEO<\/li>\n<li>And yes, some design basics<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230; and lots of other stuff to. <\/p>\n<p>Did you notice that design, was at the bottom of the list? Yes, having good design chops is always a plus, but the fact of the matter is, is that a web designer is more like an architect that puts together the pieces, rather than being the carpenter that builds things. <\/p>\n<p>Web designers (like architects) chooses the materials and puts them together properly &#8230;. but they don&#8217;t build everything from scratch.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>How about the buttons?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can buy great looking buttons \/ icons for $10-$15 a set. Why on earth would you want to spend HOURS making buttons that will probably not look half as good anyway? The answer is: you wouldn&#8217;t want to and you shouldn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>PS: web designers don&#8217;t make buttons!<\/p>\n<p>Thanks,<\/p>\n<p>Stefan Mischook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently got a call from someone wanting to know what I thought about various image editing programs in terms of their abilities to make buttons: &#8220;Stef, what program do you think I should use to create buttons for my websites? One buddy tells me he likes Corel Draw and another guy is big on &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}