We all know that sending a PSD to a developer to build from, just doesn’t cut it any more. There are enough articles complaining about the subject to sustain medium alone. So I’m not going to bore you by discussing the problem. But what I am going to do, is suggest a practical way to solve it, that doesn’t involve every designer learning to code.

I myself am a web and interaction designer. But do in fact moonlight as a front end developer.
This has been immensely useful for me. It means i know what is possible, and how to really get the most out of the web in my designs.

It also means I can contest lazy developers when they tell me something can’t be done.

However expecting all designers to take the time off to learn this skill is not only un-realistic, but it may not actually be the most effective solution.

To be the best at something, you have to specialize in it. And to specialize in it, you have to focus your time on just that one thing. So learning two slightly different fields, can end up limiting your performance.

So with this in mind, we have to turn to another solution:

At the moment, developers and designers are too far removed from each other. In most agencies they are the other side of the room. At my agency they are in fact on a separate floor: We almost never see them. Some agencies even outsource their developers.

So this needs to change, but I’m suggesting something much more than just putting designers and developers closer together.

in the 1950s, William Burnbach, an American creative director, was the first person to pair Art Directors with Copywriters. He believed that working together would result in better creative advertising. The ever increasing list of awards achieved by the agency he founded, DDB, is enough proof of his theory.

60 years later, his method is being used at practically every agency on the planet.

So if this works so well for copywriters and art directors, imagine the possibilities if designers and developers were paired in the same way: Bouncing ideas off of each other and trying to push the envelope of what is currently possible: An incontestable creative duo generating the most forward thinking web content an agency could ever dream of producing.

Not only will this system generate outstanding work, but it will save a huge amount of money and time.

Websites would be being built while they are being designed, so it would half the production time. Working agile in this manor, would also reduce the time spent on rounds of feedback between designer and developer.

All this just for the sake of adjusting your agencies seating plan.

I cant speak for the developers out there but this is how id most like to work in this industry, and something I hope to put into practice at my own agency I will one day start up.

Id be glad to hear your thoughts on this.

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