Welcome to TBD with Sam Stoner. In this podcast, we talk about all things Tech, Business, and Design. Along the way, we attempt to innovate indeterminacy and reduce the stress of the unknown. Come join us!
5 Reasons Why Designers Should Learn HTML & CSS
Episode 6
I am a designer. My focus is on graphic design and website development. I didn’t realize how limited my understanding of websites was until I took a Web Design course for my Masters program. This course covered the basics of coding with HTML and CSS to create web pages. Before this course, I could recognize what HTML looked like, but I didn’t know what to do with it or how it actually works. Through this course, I learned how to code a five-page responsive website from scratch and it gave me a new perspective on website design.
In this blog post, I’ll share five reasons why I think it is important that designers of all kinds should learn at least the basics of HTML and CSS. I am not an expert by any means, but someone who enjoys learning new things, especially when they will be useful to my professional growth as a designer.
Reason #1: Fundamental Design Skills
If you are someone who is new in your career or looking for a direction to go within the technology and design industries, learning HTML and CSS are fundamental skills to learn. Starting with these two programming languages can assess your interest-level in coding—you may find that you really enjoy it and want to learn more. The beauty of learning HTML and CSS is that it’s just the surface, you can dive into JavaScript, Python, or one of the many other programming languages out there. HTML and CSS are a springboard into the expansive world of programming languages and you never know what you might be interested in until you give it a try.
Reason #2: Understand the Backend
Before this class, my understanding of websites was very limited. Most of what I knew of websites came from working with tools like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace which turn the actual editing of a website into a simple, drag and drop interface to make it more user friendly for a wider audience. This class taught me about how servers work, the difference between static and dynamic websites, and the basics of how to manipulate code to create different styles and layouts on a webpage. I learned the underlying actions happening to the code behind the front-facing simplicity of a web builder. For example, instead of selecting the number “16” to set the font size on a web builder, I learned how to add “ p {font-size: 16px}” to a style sheet linked to an HTML page where anything written between two paragraph tags which will make the text show up in size 16px font.
Reason #3: Improve Collaboration
It’s no secret that working with others can be both rewarding and challenging when it comes to design. People have different ways to describe what they intend a designed piece to look like, especially when they are approaching the design from different perspectives. Learning HTML and CSS will not solve all of these challenges, but what it can do is improve how designers collaborate with programmers. By understanding the basics of the language, designers can begin to speak in ways that better communicate the design to the programmers who will build their design.
Reason #4: Tweak Standard Templates
The rise of website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly brought with it the prevalence of cheap, or cheap-looking, website templates. The positives of this are that it breaks down barriers for non-designers to still get an affordable and decent looking website. However, the downside is that with so many templates in the industry, the need to stand out and become super customized has never been higher. HTML and CSS are not the whole solution to this issue, but it does present designers new opportunities to tweak design templates to make them stand out and unique from the others using similar templates.
Reason #5: Appreciate When Things Work
This one is a little subjective, but I know I felt this way when I started to understand how HTML and CSS work. I started to understand just how much work goes into making something that presents itself as clean, simple, and straightforward. At first glance, HTML looks like a jumbled collection of words and symbols that can appear to scroll endlessly. Once I understood the structure and how to properly read HTML, those endless lines of code seemed less scary and started to make sense. Just for fun, I’ve opened up the developer tools on a webpage just to look at the HTML code used. This is a good way to familiarize yourself with real world examples of HTML and CSS in action.
Conclusion
I enjoyed this class about HTML and CSS and am thankful for the deeper understanding I now have about websites. They are great foundational design skills and I encourage other designers to learn the basics. Jump in and see if it’s something you enjoy. In my opinion, you’ll find it worth it even just for the sake of learning something new.
Cover photo by Jackson So on Unsplash