Wrong!
I was reading Twitter today as you do when a tweet from Sean Johnson caught my eye.
I *am* a creative.
The Oxford English Dictionary says so.
creative (noun) A person whose job involves creative work http://t.co/Sx2ZWMqEwo
— Sean Johnson (@seanuk) July 7, 2014
It reminded me of a few months back, probably last year when I was talking to a designer about “designing in the browser”. This person was dead against the idea as they didn’t really understand the concept. The line “But how can it be designed if I’m not doing it and you are?” was rolled out.
It hurt. Was this how front-end developers were seen. Just as someone who builds what they are given? Am I a non-creative person? Needless to say, I took offense at this. I’m not the world’s best designer but I have a good understanding of what is good and bad and how to go about achieving results. I’m not shit by any stretch.
Most front-end people I know are handy when it comes to design. I think you have to be personally otherwise you are building by numbers and nobody deserves that.
Back to Sean’s tweet and yes, he’s correct. His job involves “creative” work but I’d also say that what we do whether it be CSS, PHP or plain old fashioned words, we’re creative in what we do as a process.
We really need to lose this attitude of designers design, coders build. It’s bullshit. Are people threatened by the fact that we’re moving more towards designing in the browser and that more and more people are multi disciplined. Is it just the dinosaurs that are coming out with all this “you can’t be creative” nonsense.
Like all things on the web, you have to adapt. Fall behind and you become extinct.
Good luck with that.