I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of designers in the past year. I have to say, I’ve noticed a slightly worrying trend among the designer community – the resistance to the idea of content management systems such as Drupal. The concern seems to be about a perceived lack of design freedom, or about having to learn about too many technical details for too many CMS platforms.
I am not one to believe that good designers will ever be out of a job. I do however believe that the attitude of the designer needs an adjustment. I’ve met entrepreneurs that have built entire websites and built successful businesses without an ounce of design school and zero technical background. They’ve put together a website and self sustaining business by sheer will power, using Photoshop and a CMS. I am always impressed by this when I see it.
They have been able to do this, because the internet and its underlying technology continue to forge toward an ever ubiquitous environment. Certainly all of these solutions that I have come across need major improvements in design, and it is really remarkable to hear these business owners at times announce that they won’t ever need a designer.
But still, they do have somewhat of a point. Their solutions are not that far away from quality, I’ve even seen some of them that only need a little design help. Yes you can see the glaringly obvious lack of a grid system, bad typography, and broken color rules – but only because they are unaware of these things. In a few more years these things will be common knowledge, indeed they may already be.
This means that design is becoming ever more of a utility proposition each day, and I fear for the designer whom needs a sexy high end project to be motivated. As a technologist by background, I’ve had plenty of 14 hour stints troubleshooting a problem that is ever elusive, often in a chilly raised floor data center huddling around a much too small to be effective console. The designer will need to understand that there will be days of simply designing side bars and boxes with gradients. It’s par for the course in today’s CMS driven world.
I imagine the designer looks at something like Drupal 6 and self built sites with stock themes and winces in pain – but I promise you they are soon to be surprised.
If I could have two wishes granted, I’d ask that business owners and executives realize that the targeted use of formally trained designers is essential, and to trust companies like Zemelo to keep these costs contained – but secondly, and most importantly, I’d ask designers to join communities like Drupal and advocate for good design, embracing the future as opposed to trying to ignore it.