Comments on: The death of web design

By: cnh

cnh — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 23:36:05 +0000

Great post. sadly also very true. i have been doing web development since 95 and i was in IT before that. one problem is that web development is not a clear identity. it is clear what an electrician is. not so much when it comes to web developer. every business or client has a different idea as to who you are and what you do.12 year old, high school whiz kid, ad copy writer, IT guy, office worker , cheap overseas worker, lofty artsy guy all in one. and it keeps changing and morphing in another direction. Maybe this is a temporary profession.

By: Travis

Travis — Fri, 06 May 2011 22:58:54 +0000

I agree completely. I’ve been a developer for about 10 years now and the biggest problem I encounter is trying to ease over potential clients. Many of the “web design” underlings have taken payment for projects and either never completed or did a horrible job. This has made many businesses leery of hiring anyone else for the job. Which in turn means I have a hell of a time trying to obtain payments for completed projects.

By: Web developer

Web developer — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:38:30 +0000

As more people brainlessly install a template for themselves, the differentiation between them and the experienced (real) developers is becoming greater.

By: Bodasactra

Bodasactra — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 19:52:58 +0000

Seems true enough on face but lets look deeper. Along with the lower level designers there are many lower level clients willing to hire them. I don’t want a client that would pay so little for sub par work. On the better side. real web design has evolved beyond the personal page designers that have always been online. The CS5 workflow, Jquery, HTML 5, the need for development and interactivity, SEO (oh the SEO) and actually making websites that earn a keep as you have outlined are the separators. Yes a child can make a website and most can drive a car if the opportunity presented, but that does not meant it is to be done. The serious client knows enough and the serious designer has the right feathers in cap to keep to a higher ground. In that regard real pro web design is safe and sound. I manage to do quite well with very little effort. It depends on your skills to make a website that produces results as not many actually do that.

By: Kent

Kent — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:12:31 +0000

For freelancers, I cannot agree more with the author. There are still decent opportunities for the very skilled to work for hired labor building websites like government contracts.

I built my first 200-page web 1.0 site in 2001. After years of doing it as a hobby, I decided to start a business. When the economy was rolling before the end of the ‘Bush admin’ I got calls for price checking all of the time. When the man on the news said “The economy was in shatters”, the calls have been significantly less ever since.

To upgrade, I became certified in PHP/SQL, HTML/CSS, Javascript and Ajax and have very sound knowledge of many CMS Fremeworks. This…has not helped in getting the phone to ring more often. Yet, I cannot believe how many people will pay the $199 FOR CRAP when they can have a web 2.0 site for a couple hundred more.

I have always loved learning and the rush of building stuff I had always imagined. So, I accept doing this is best at part-time to avoid the headaches of over-saturation.

Thank goodness I made a good real estate move and bought 4 acres when prices were down and that I have 50K in the bank from book royalties so that I can start a ‘FEET ON THE GROUND BUSINESS’ like a hair salon or bed and breakfast and use the web to acquire real traffic…not some other person who can point and click at a Joomla installation and ask how to modify my extensions in the Joomla JED.

Kent

By: Dmitry

Dmitry — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:23:10 +0000

There are still plenty of money in web design but it won’t make you reach I guess just enough to get by.
Also I can agree with some points mentioned in this article but have to say there are always plenty of work if you look hard enough.
New sites appear and disappear every day so saying there is not enough work around for every web designer out there it over statement. Typical design cycle for existing website between 2-4 years then usually you have to redesign it.
Outsourcing is actually slowly dying off more and more businesses prefer to deal with a local companies when need something done. Saying that most 12 years old can create a website for you it’s absurd it’s the same as this dummy series books you can became programmer in two weeks but you can’t. The reallity it take 6 -10 years to learn programming and probabably 50-60% of people would failed any way.
Is website design is died as source of revenue NO.
Is website design died in general YES – it’s seems in past couple years everyone just stuck with the same web 2 design concept and simply copy each other stuff over and over there is no more excitement on a web it became boring.
WEB 2 + Web Design * Boring = died web design.

By: Oskar Smith

Oskar Smith — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:39:02 +0000

Looks like I’m a latecomer to your blog post, but I stumbled across it while reading some articles on this subject; a subject that I tend to wake up thinking about and go to sleep thinking about! Our industry has changed beyond recognition over the last 10 years or so and it makes one’s head hurt sometimes trying to keep up! Anyway, just wanted to say great post and your last paragraph sums up my thinking exactly.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:53:22 +0000

At first I was surprised no one has commented on this article yet. Though it should be no surprise. The web developer community is pretty small really.

I agree with every reason you gave. But you left a big one out. Blogs. Particularly WordPress. And, to go a step further, Google’s love for WordPress.

So many people who have consistently ran blogs for the last few years are doing extremely well without knowing one thing about any kind of code at all.

So, basically, I would say outsourcing and blogs are the culprits that have you asking “how did this happen”?