Hi all, my first post here!
I am a self-taught aspiring front-end developer who came from a non-technical background. I love and enjoy working wit...
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You pointed out that front-end encompasses a complex spectrum of overlapping fields, and I want to mirror that by noting that UI design is an equally complex and interrelated assortment of practices. It seems like you are most concerned about visual design, but UI design also encompasses every other aspect of how a person interacts with software. You do not need to know very much at all about visual design to be a great front-end developer. However, UI design is deeply connected to things that appear to be progamming concerns:
I love spending time on Dribbble! But when I'm hiring front-end developers I don't really care that much if they know about font-size ratios. We have wonderful, highly skilled designers that work with us to codify those aspects of our design into reusable components. What I do care about are all of the things that I mentioned.
Being a great front-end developer isn't about being very good at writing code and also, separately, being very good at making nice looking visuals. It's about understanding where those two outcomes intersect and why they are related.
I'm going to ask a really dumb question here. If designers are creating a component library with code, what are the FEs doing? I have not worked with any large teams (yet) so this is a question I have always had.
Here's an analogy:
You have interior designers who come and figure out a good layout for a room, considering all the different things the client wants in their home.
You also have the movers, painters, carpenters, etc who make the vision a reality.
We are the movers, painters, and carpenters. Design/Product provides a vision of where the end product should be, while developers bring that vision to life.
Er... That's the traditional FE roles. I am familiar with that. But if interior designers are also moving your furniture, what is the mover doing?
It all depends on the scope of the project.
Designing and moving are two different skill sets. The thing is, it's not common for people to have an exceptional ability at both. They're extremely talented at one or the other.
If the designer only had one product to create, which was to design your living room, then surely the designer could also help move stuff with the movers, but most likely not at the speed and proficiency of the other movers. The same thing could be said if the tables were turned.
But now, let's imagine that you as a designer have to design for 5 different projects instead of just one.
If you're moving furniture, who is going to keep looking after the designs to see if anything could be improved/added? It's gonna be hard if you're focused on moving stuff.
End goal of what im saying is that:
On small projects it could be beneficial to have a designer help create systems for ease of development.
However at a big company unless that's their sole job, they will have other priorities because designing is much more than simply creating component libraries.
Like Luke said,
This is why i'm not a fan of the terms front-end and back-end. Designers/Developers/Project Managers all work together to create products! :)
We have wonderful, highly skilled designers that work with us to codify those aspects of our design into reusable components.
designers are codifying it? I want to understand this! because traditionally, designers produce the vision in graphic format and devs translate vision in code, don't they?
As far as your career prospects: if you like having a playbook to follow, you might do better at larger companies. They'll have separate design and UX departments who give you a style guide or pattern library and wireframes to implement; your role is to help them work out what is and isn't feasible, and then to make the final designs real as efficiently as possible. You could stop there, or use the opportunity afforded by working with pros to develop your own design sensibilities.
Or you could keep trying to learn interface design on your own -- it's a skill, it can be learned! It just takes time, effort, and the willingness to keep iterating on less-than-stellar prototypes.
Either way, very few people are going to be good at design without first putting in a lot of time at getting good. Figure out how you're likely to learn more faster and give it a shot.
Thank you for the insight and the advice!
Yeah, I'll keep trying to improve my design chops. I'm building my personal website and hoping to finish this Q3. And yes, that's the plan, I hope to be good enough to someday work in a team with good designers! *fingers crossed
I've been on the same boat, but whith holes in it 😂
It literally took me a year, from the moment I thought about writing my portfolio to the moment I actually coded something I thought it was worth publishing.
Since I was a backend developer, I started learning Nodejs as a way of learning Javascript. Then I moved to React. And then I went to back to learning deep Javascript foundations I was lacking.
When it comes to CSS, oh God, basically trial and error, looking for code examples and tweaking them. I purposedly jumped on an opportunity as a front end developer so I could learn more.
When it comes to UI, I'm definitely not the creative type. There's a controversial quote "good artists copy; great artists steal", I think one way to get better at UI is by taking inspiration from awarded sites and mocking them, and then tweaking them until it transforms into something you can finally say "ok, this looks more like me".
Confidence will eventually come and you'll be able to design your ideas from scratch, because you won't get held back by the thought that you're not technically good enough.
Nowadays most from my learning is coming from frontendmasters.com