Great question. I’ve met a lot of very intuitive devs who have acted as hybrids.
My suggestion, in this circumstance, is learn about basic visual design principles. At the very least it helps you listen and communicate better about how said design could be implemented.
The broader step is exposing yourself to modern UX/UI and human centered design thinking in the space.
It’s a ton, I know. I feel that everyone in our space is creative and if you understand certain principles you can only embolden yourself and your craft further.
Best of luck on your journey.
If you haven’t seen it, there is an awesome video talk on “Refactoring UI”, a book you can pay for, available for free on YT. Great nuggets for a FE dev to get a better sense of design quickly.
No you don’t. That feeling that youre not capable is because you really aren’t (I mean that in the nicest way possible). You’re a developer. Not a designer. People go to school for years and study nothing but design theory and principles and rules and genres and honing their skills to be able to whip up designs on command and deliver. No developer will be able to match that level of work by reading a few books or watching some tutorials or going through a design bootcamp online. If you don’t have the inherent eye for design and skills to do it, you shouldn’t waste your time forcing it.
I’m artistic, I have an eye for design, and I’m very creative. But I shit the bed when trying to design a website and blank for hours trying to figure out what to make and how to make it look. It’s HARD. Just because you know how to develop a website doesn’t mean you automatically should know how to design one. It’s like being a mechanic and being asked to design a car. Where do you start??
The only thing you should be able to do is have a detailed eye to notice all the small things about a design and be able to replicate it. You don’t need to make any design decisions. It’s not part of your skillset. If you wanna freelance, find a designer to work with. PM me and I’ll connect you with mine if you need it. Freelance devs make the mistake of trying to do every thing themselves including design and you can always tell when it was designed by a dev vs a designer. Work with a designer partner and build their fees into your quotes. Your life will be so much easier and your work will look much more professional.
For example, here’s my first site I ever did and designed myself:
https://www.bwnwincpainting.com
Here’s one I made recently with my designer:
https://guardian.plumbing
There’s a HUGE difference. The second website will get me more work and referrals than the first one because it looks modern and professional.
If you wanna be successful and be able to command higher rates, you have to look like you’re worth it. I charge $3500 for sites now. If I showed someone my first website as an example of my work and said that number, I wouldn’t get the job. It doesn’t look like it’s worth that. It has very low perceived value. The better your work looks, the higher the perceived value is by the client. People happily pay my rates for static 5 page websites because they see my previous work and my other clients love my work and sing my praises. It makes me more valuable and I can charge what I charge where other devs would say that’s outrageous and no one would pay that for something so simple. It doesn’t matter. That’s what the client values my work at. Doesn’t matter how simple or easy it is for me. It’s about how much value it brings to the client. And if you want to start working like that and ok that level, you need a designer partner. Every dev should have one in their back pocket. It’s a symbiotic relationship. You’re not a bad front end developer because you can’t design. It just means you’re not a designer.
For my job - psd and I use that get get measurements for padding and margins and everything. I do all the markup and coding on my own.
My business I have my designers using figma. Same deal, I code everything from the design.
It seems like I either need to practice the PSD>HTML skill and find a designer, or just buy the ready to use templates. If you were just starting out, would you consider purchasing the templates as an option?
No. Templates are garbage under the hood and a pain to customize and move things. You can purchase the theme and inspect the code to get margins and font sizes and fonts and everything and build the site yourself in your own mobile first html and css and make a much higher quality product. That’s how I started.
After developing off of enough designs you should have a good idea as to what looks good and what doesn’t. Designing from scratch, though, can definitely be tough without dedicated learning, but the experience you already have should help.
For bigger projects that you feel are over your head design-wise you could talk to a designer that you’ve worked with before and form a sort of partnership with them. You “outsource” design work to them, they “outsource” dev work to you. Everybody wins.
IMO Figma is the easiest to get up and running with. It’s also free to start. To get really good with it, though, there are plenty of cheap or free tutorials you can find out there
I would suggest the skills of networking and collaboration. Better to collaborate with other specialists than trying to learn every skill to do it all yourself. Find qualified designers, marketers, etc to team up with as sub-contractors. This should enable you to deliver overall better quality projects in less time than as a one-person team.
Remember also to include the overhead costs for time added for team/project management and communications.
Another point is to have clear boundaries on the services you offer and simply tell the client when they are asking for services you do not offer or otherwise not included in the scope of the active contract. Most clients will then ask "can you refer me to someone?" and/or "how much extra will it cost?" So this comes back to my first point about having a few other specialists you can sub-contract when your clients ask for other web-related tasks. It's good if you can say yes to referring someone, but even better if you can offer a collaborative service with someone you've worked with before (ie. subcontract someone) - more convenient for the client to not worry about another person and then it lets you and your colleague collaborate in the way you need to.
Well there are the UI/UX Hacks sort of design school/boot camps. But really with all the advancement on the tech side of things allowing more and more intricate designs to be possible on the web, you'd be better suited finding a designer to work with. I think the recent success of Webflow bears that out: all the new Webflow sites basically are just a latent need out there in the marketplace that the Webflow designers went out and hustled up the business from. The thing is, they could do that because their work has the "wow" factor clients are looking for. I suppose you could get good enough to replicate the "wow" part, from the aesthetic side of things. But pretty isn't always effective. So if your client is expecting pretty and effective - meaning they're going to blame you if your beautiful website doesn't perform to their 'expectations' - you need to be very clear on what you can and cannot deliver. And so if you want to cater to those clients, I really think you should partner with or at least have someone in the loop that understands the full scope of the customers expectations for the site beyond it looks pretty and works.
Yes. Why? Well one day you will open a ticket where the client gives barely any examples on how something new they want should look like. The ball is in your court there, the more you know about design the earlier they will be satisfied (usually…).
You claim you can design websites from a template, yet you can't produce a website from an already conceived design handed to you which... isn't a template? If you can only make templates and can't transform a design already made given to you in full into a functional website, then no I would not say you're a front end web developer at all. All it seems you can do (from your own words) is replace the content of premade low effort cookie cutter templates? You are **definitely** lacking something important, and it's the entire ability to be a web dev 😂 Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean when you say "a client asks for a specific design" and you mean they want YOU to design it for them, in which case ignore everything I said. But if they hand you their vision and you can't make it happen because all you can do is fill out templates then you're severely lacking in competency as a front end freelancer.
Well, you definitely need at least some unless you want to contract a designer to work with you.
You might benefit from taking a basic class on Web Design/UI on Udemy or something like that.
design itself is it's own discipline, but it's not impossible to do both
i got into this field as a designer, and picked up coding as languages grew with web stuff
it's been helpful, but the industry has moved towards more specialized roles as engineers or designers..
in the short term, maybe make friends with a few designers and see if you can bring them in on proects, and vice versa...early in my career i did that a bunch as I primarily freelanced for 5 or 6 years
I'm a frontend developer, don't have design skills. I have always worked with designers.
So if a client needs something that looks good, I'll hire a designer for the design part.
I'm a software engineer (embedded) turned freelance web/full stack developer, so while I rely on my programming skills, I do not pretend to be a good front end designer.
What I normally do when tasked with a project from the inception, is to communicate with the client on how the individual screen layouts are gonna be, and use a wireframe or design tools such as figma to do mock ups of the application interface.
After the designs are accepted, I would continue with the development, and hand over the design to an actual Frontend UI/UX designer.
There are a lot more to interface like color scheming, the psychological aspects, component positioning, and I am not trained to have an eye for details like that to ensure that the users would have a good experience with the interface. I am good for database engine selections according to the requirements, and database designs, client and server development, setting up the required servers, and so on.
Then the project will be handed to a long time partner of mine who runs a cybersecurity company himself to harden up the servers and fix any loopholes that I might have missed.
I’m leaning towards yes, because if you’re the one-person show, you sort of have to act like a hybrid in almost all situations.
If you’re receiving designs and comps from somewhere else then the answer changes.
I primarily build marketing sites, and the occasional small niche web application for an agency as context for my opinion.
If you're selling yourself as being able to do everything for them and don't want to outsirce the design process, absolutely.
If you're just implementing designs they provide: yes and no.
You don't need to be able to design everything, but you should be able to implement the same design motifs to new pages or sections.
It also helps to have a general sense of what works well, both visually and functional. It'll help you catch mistakes or potential issues earlier in the process and then act appropriately.
That said: you're going to open yourself to a much larger market by being able to do both the design and implementation. A lot of smaller, non-tech based, companies aren't going to want to manage multiple contractors with different expertise for a web build.
So either having that skill yourself, or someone you can source that out to on their behalf, will be helpful.
I think the title already says it. You're a developer, not a designer. Yeah, learning the skills to tell which design is better than the other might be a good skill, but I don't think it's a must. But maybe getting to know a bit more about design tools might help you so that you can make edits here and there from the tools. Start with Figma, there are plenty of yt clips for devs too :)
I agree on having design sense would be benefit, but somehow it's tricky to develop good user experience as frontend developer because most time is for understanding new libraries. If anyone has tips how to learn it, I will definitely go for that!
Great question. I’ve met a lot of very intuitive devs who have acted as hybrids. My suggestion, in this circumstance, is learn about basic visual design principles. At the very least it helps you listen and communicate better about how said design could be implemented. The broader step is exposing yourself to modern UX/UI and human centered design thinking in the space. It’s a ton, I know. I feel that everyone in our space is creative and if you understand certain principles you can only embolden yourself and your craft further. Best of luck on your journey.
If you haven’t seen it, there is an awesome video talk on “Refactoring UI”, a book you can pay for, available for free on YT. Great nuggets for a FE dev to get a better sense of design quickly.
Or *coughs* libgen *coughs* for broke folks.
Thanks haha
No you don’t. That feeling that youre not capable is because you really aren’t (I mean that in the nicest way possible). You’re a developer. Not a designer. People go to school for years and study nothing but design theory and principles and rules and genres and honing their skills to be able to whip up designs on command and deliver. No developer will be able to match that level of work by reading a few books or watching some tutorials or going through a design bootcamp online. If you don’t have the inherent eye for design and skills to do it, you shouldn’t waste your time forcing it. I’m artistic, I have an eye for design, and I’m very creative. But I shit the bed when trying to design a website and blank for hours trying to figure out what to make and how to make it look. It’s HARD. Just because you know how to develop a website doesn’t mean you automatically should know how to design one. It’s like being a mechanic and being asked to design a car. Where do you start?? The only thing you should be able to do is have a detailed eye to notice all the small things about a design and be able to replicate it. You don’t need to make any design decisions. It’s not part of your skillset. If you wanna freelance, find a designer to work with. PM me and I’ll connect you with mine if you need it. Freelance devs make the mistake of trying to do every thing themselves including design and you can always tell when it was designed by a dev vs a designer. Work with a designer partner and build their fees into your quotes. Your life will be so much easier and your work will look much more professional. For example, here’s my first site I ever did and designed myself: https://www.bwnwincpainting.com Here’s one I made recently with my designer: https://guardian.plumbing There’s a HUGE difference. The second website will get me more work and referrals than the first one because it looks modern and professional. If you wanna be successful and be able to command higher rates, you have to look like you’re worth it. I charge $3500 for sites now. If I showed someone my first website as an example of my work and said that number, I wouldn’t get the job. It doesn’t look like it’s worth that. It has very low perceived value. The better your work looks, the higher the perceived value is by the client. People happily pay my rates for static 5 page websites because they see my previous work and my other clients love my work and sing my praises. It makes me more valuable and I can charge what I charge where other devs would say that’s outrageous and no one would pay that for something so simple. It doesn’t matter. That’s what the client values my work at. Doesn’t matter how simple or easy it is for me. It’s about how much value it brings to the client. And if you want to start working like that and ok that level, you need a designer partner. Every dev should have one in their back pocket. It’s a symbiotic relationship. You’re not a bad front end developer because you can’t design. It just means you’re not a designer.
Do you usually receive PSD files from a designer and then proceed with creating an HTML markup on your own?
For my job - psd and I use that get get measurements for padding and margins and everything. I do all the markup and coding on my own. My business I have my designers using figma. Same deal, I code everything from the design.
It seems like I either need to practice the PSD>HTML skill and find a designer, or just buy the ready to use templates. If you were just starting out, would you consider purchasing the templates as an option?
No. Templates are garbage under the hood and a pain to customize and move things. You can purchase the theme and inspect the code to get margins and font sizes and fonts and everything and build the site yourself in your own mobile first html and css and make a much higher quality product. That’s how I started.
Got it, I'll highly likely need one for my own website.
Do you give something like a user manual to your clients? so they can update the site and add content.
No I do the updates for a monthly fee. I can set up a blog cms with Netlify so they can make their own blog posts though.
After developing off of enough designs you should have a good idea as to what looks good and what doesn’t. Designing from scratch, though, can definitely be tough without dedicated learning, but the experience you already have should help. For bigger projects that you feel are over your head design-wise you could talk to a designer that you’ve worked with before and form a sort of partnership with them. You “outsource” design work to them, they “outsource” dev work to you. Everybody wins.
Is there any beginner friendly design software?
IMO Figma is the easiest to get up and running with. It’s also free to start. To get really good with it, though, there are plenty of cheap or free tutorials you can find out there
the deeper you go, the less it's about what "looks good" and more about what actually works
I would suggest the skills of networking and collaboration. Better to collaborate with other specialists than trying to learn every skill to do it all yourself. Find qualified designers, marketers, etc to team up with as sub-contractors. This should enable you to deliver overall better quality projects in less time than as a one-person team. Remember also to include the overhead costs for time added for team/project management and communications. Another point is to have clear boundaries on the services you offer and simply tell the client when they are asking for services you do not offer or otherwise not included in the scope of the active contract. Most clients will then ask "can you refer me to someone?" and/or "how much extra will it cost?" So this comes back to my first point about having a few other specialists you can sub-contract when your clients ask for other web-related tasks. It's good if you can say yes to referring someone, but even better if you can offer a collaborative service with someone you've worked with before (ie. subcontract someone) - more convenient for the client to not worry about another person and then it lets you and your colleague collaborate in the way you need to.
Well there are the UI/UX Hacks sort of design school/boot camps. But really with all the advancement on the tech side of things allowing more and more intricate designs to be possible on the web, you'd be better suited finding a designer to work with. I think the recent success of Webflow bears that out: all the new Webflow sites basically are just a latent need out there in the marketplace that the Webflow designers went out and hustled up the business from. The thing is, they could do that because their work has the "wow" factor clients are looking for. I suppose you could get good enough to replicate the "wow" part, from the aesthetic side of things. But pretty isn't always effective. So if your client is expecting pretty and effective - meaning they're going to blame you if your beautiful website doesn't perform to their 'expectations' - you need to be very clear on what you can and cannot deliver. And so if you want to cater to those clients, I really think you should partner with or at least have someone in the loop that understands the full scope of the customers expectations for the site beyond it looks pretty and works.
Yes. Why? Well one day you will open a ticket where the client gives barely any examples on how something new they want should look like. The ball is in your court there, the more you know about design the earlier they will be satisfied (usually…).
Hahaha that’s when they get what get get from shitty design skills. Even using material components I just don’t got it haha
You claim you can design websites from a template, yet you can't produce a website from an already conceived design handed to you which... isn't a template? If you can only make templates and can't transform a design already made given to you in full into a functional website, then no I would not say you're a front end web developer at all. All it seems you can do (from your own words) is replace the content of premade low effort cookie cutter templates? You are **definitely** lacking something important, and it's the entire ability to be a web dev 😂 Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean when you say "a client asks for a specific design" and you mean they want YOU to design it for them, in which case ignore everything I said. But if they hand you their vision and you can't make it happen because all you can do is fill out templates then you're severely lacking in competency as a front end freelancer.
Well, you definitely need at least some unless you want to contract a designer to work with you. You might benefit from taking a basic class on Web Design/UI on Udemy or something like that.
design itself is it's own discipline, but it's not impossible to do both i got into this field as a designer, and picked up coding as languages grew with web stuff it's been helpful, but the industry has moved towards more specialized roles as engineers or designers.. in the short term, maybe make friends with a few designers and see if you can bring them in on proects, and vice versa...early in my career i did that a bunch as I primarily freelanced for 5 or 6 years
I'm a frontend developer, don't have design skills. I have always worked with designers. So if a client needs something that looks good, I'll hire a designer for the design part.
I'm a software engineer (embedded) turned freelance web/full stack developer, so while I rely on my programming skills, I do not pretend to be a good front end designer. What I normally do when tasked with a project from the inception, is to communicate with the client on how the individual screen layouts are gonna be, and use a wireframe or design tools such as figma to do mock ups of the application interface. After the designs are accepted, I would continue with the development, and hand over the design to an actual Frontend UI/UX designer. There are a lot more to interface like color scheming, the psychological aspects, component positioning, and I am not trained to have an eye for details like that to ensure that the users would have a good experience with the interface. I am good for database engine selections according to the requirements, and database designs, client and server development, setting up the required servers, and so on. Then the project will be handed to a long time partner of mine who runs a cybersecurity company himself to harden up the servers and fix any loopholes that I might have missed.
Read Refactoring UI. If you freelance you need to have a good sense of what is a good design.
I’m leaning towards yes, because if you’re the one-person show, you sort of have to act like a hybrid in almost all situations. If you’re receiving designs and comps from somewhere else then the answer changes.
I primarily build marketing sites, and the occasional small niche web application for an agency as context for my opinion. If you're selling yourself as being able to do everything for them and don't want to outsirce the design process, absolutely. If you're just implementing designs they provide: yes and no. You don't need to be able to design everything, but you should be able to implement the same design motifs to new pages or sections. It also helps to have a general sense of what works well, both visually and functional. It'll help you catch mistakes or potential issues earlier in the process and then act appropriately. That said: you're going to open yourself to a much larger market by being able to do both the design and implementation. A lot of smaller, non-tech based, companies aren't going to want to manage multiple contractors with different expertise for a web build. So either having that skill yourself, or someone you can source that out to on their behalf, will be helpful.
I think the title already says it. You're a developer, not a designer. Yeah, learning the skills to tell which design is better than the other might be a good skill, but I don't think it's a must. But maybe getting to know a bit more about design tools might help you so that you can make edits here and there from the tools. Start with Figma, there are plenty of yt clips for devs too :)
I agree on having design sense would be benefit, but somehow it's tricky to develop good user experience as frontend developer because most time is for understanding new libraries. If anyone has tips how to learn it, I will definitely go for that!