You Are Not A Web Designer

[If you know someone who calls themselves a “web designer” or “graphic designer” - please direct them to this blog post]

Many years ago, the Internet was considered a mysterious place for the elite to converse and develop their skill. If you mentioned “The Internet” to one of your friends or family, they would give you that confused and bewildered look, as if to suggest that you’re some kind of reclusive geek who spends 16 hours a day in his bedroom “online” performing voodoo magic that they’d never be able to comprehend. They’d shrug it off as a “waste of time” and figure that it’d never get anywhere. If they knew you spent 15 of those 16 hours masturbating to “Old guys and young girls” pornography, they’d be well within their right to say “I told you so.”

Not all of us sat jerking off to mature pornorama. Some of us were, as hard as it is to believe, educating ourselves. We were learning about the Internet, the technical aspects, and how the fuck technology allows this old guy to screw this pert little 18 year old chick on my screen. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?! We went in search of answers.

Then… something happened. Was it the MySpace boom, or the various other start-ups hitting the news to be sold for obscene amounts of money, that woke up this sleeping community? When did the Internet suddenly become an understood household necessity? I must’ve missed the memo. Fortunately, not all Internet users have quite grasped the real potential of it yet. They’re still browsing Facebook, looking for that one guy or girl who shot them down 20 years ago when they were at school, to see how they turned out. They turned out fat, ugly and probably married with children. There, I’ve saved you several hours of hunting and the potential humiliation of meeting them and being shot down YET AGAIN. I’ve saved your life, buddy.

When I was at school, lots of people took “Art” as a class. At the time I didn’t understand it at all, but fuck it… I took the class anyway. It came to me in a paint-covered revelation that “art” was in fact the easiest and most fun class available to me. I could spend an hour, literally throwing paint around on people, on paper, on any material I could find, and call it my latest work. If the teacher commented on it in a negative fashion, I’d simply say “you don’t understand what I’m trying to achieve here” and baffle them with my hidden artistic genius. The truth, however, was that I didn’t have a single fucking artistic bone in my body.
Throwing paint around on a piece of paper does not make you a genius. Gradually, over the course of the proceeding 15 years or so, more and more people decide to take “art” as a class, presumably to do as little work as possible like me.

This, my dear readers, presents a problem. With the Internet being such a common utility these days, and literally thousands and thousands of school-leavers who studied art bundling out onto the streets with nothing to do…… they have but only one choice. Become a “web designer”.

Unfortunately what they fail to realise is their reasons for taking art anyway. Not because you have talent, or because you’re trying to express yourself in a manner that you’re unable to do so in words, or with your penis. But because it requires absolutely no thought at all. It’s a doss. A way to waste your time to progress through school. If you somehow managed to get an ‘A’ in art, then congratulations motherfucker, you can look at and draw a piece of fruit accurately. This does not make you special. It simply means your eyes work. You aren’t blind. Well done.

So these dropouts, usually in severe debt because all students are alcoholics, sit at home on the Internet and decide to become web designers. They download a copy of Photoshop from a Torrent site, and away they go, drawing shit that vaguely resembles a web page. They don’t understand the fundamentals, such as User Interface Accessibility, or understand why and where they should use particular fonts. They just draw shit on a page. I shall now dub this shit on a page as “page-farts”, and instead of “web designer” I shall use the term “page farter”.

They’ll spend probably 6 months honing their skills, making ever so slight variations on already existing page-farts. Ultimately their designs are always the same, but with barely noticeable colour changes, or location changes. In the back of their mind, this page farter will be able to resell all of these page farts for mega $$$. Yes, friends, it’s really that easy. They will print off and demonstrate their page farts to friends and family, to be met with the obligatory “that’s great”, or “that’s good”. These statements are much akin to a guy or girl telling you that “you’re cute” which, if you don’t already know by now, means you look like a hemorrhoid covered ass. It’s not a compliment, you ugly cunt. They will now introduce themselves as a “web designer” - which is now a completely defunct concept as it’s the same as saying “unemployed student”.

Some page farters make it out of the larvae stage and will register their own domain. Usually it’s their full name .com; www.pagefarter.com for example. They may print business cards to try and look “cool”, slowly and surely putting themselves into more and more debt. Ironically, most page farters will actually pay someone else to design their own site. They will claim various things for this, such as “I didn’t have the time”. We all know the truth. They are ashamed. Ashame of their (in)ability to paint better than my 5 year old neice. Or even paint better than Leonardo DiCaprio the fucking retard in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”.
Yeah, that’s right, retards could do a better job than you page farters. At least they’d be more likely to have some kind of undiscovered genius, like that guy in “Rain Man”.

Finally, when they receive no clients and no potential job prospects, these page farters will give up the “web designer” profession and leave it to the true professionals - the Indians. The Indians who will work for 10% of your salary, and produce a higher calibre of work, because they stole it from somewhere else to begin with.

Just because you can draw, doesn’t make you a “web designer” or a “graphic designer”. Anyone with the use of their hands (or feet - see the movie “My Left Foot”) can draw. Schizophrenics can draw. If you put a slug on a piece of paper, it’ll make some kind of mess. The trick is knowing your own limitations.

If everything you “design” looks similar, you are not a web designer.
If you deliberately design everything to be “Web 2.0? you are not a web designer.
If you use the same colour schemes, time and time again, you are not a web designer.
If you don’t understand what accessibility is, or anything about User Interfaces, you are not a web designer.
If your copy of Photoshop is cracked/warezed then you are not a web designer.
If you think using a Mac improves your design skills or image, you are not a web designer.
If you got an ‘A’ in Art at school, you are not a web designer.

Some of you may disagree with the points above, particularly the “Web 2.0? comment. If you do, then I have one thing to say to you. Fuck you. You clearly have no idea what “Web 2.0? is in reference to. It’s a concept, and has very little to actually do with design. All of these fucks who have tried to design clean, sleak, ugly looking sites to maximise “information display” have got it all wrong. I’ll leave this debate for another post.

As always, with any of my rantings, there are exceptions to the rule. Some, true web designers have flair and talent. They can take a concept, and turn it into a living, breathing creation with it’s own personality. I applaud these guys and the work they do. I sympathise that your industry has become so saturated than it’s difficult to get work.

For 95% of you, though, you are, have never been, and will never be a true web designer. You are just like the people who work in Subway and call themselves “Sandwich Artists”. You put meat and vegetables into a fucking piece of bread. It’s time to re-evaluate your station in life.

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