Position Wanted: Front-End Director

We have creative directors and design directors, but we don’t seem to have any front-end directors. And maybe we should.

For years at big companies, people in different silos have written CSS with no information or understanding about each other’s work. This results in huge, sloppy files that have a negative impact on site performance, as folks write more and more complex rules trying to override pre-existing ones … or “solve” the problem by adding dozens or even hundreds of classes to their CSS and markup.

Professionals with serious front-end chops have tried to solve the problem by coming up with complex rules and systems which, by the time they filter their way down to less experienced developers, get turned into dogma. Every time I see a front-end article’s comments section rapidly fill with absolute statements about whether it’s okay or not to use id, I recognize that someone’s good idea has turned into somebody else’s religion.

And while I commend my colleagues who craft approaches to CSS that help avoid the inevitable problems large-scale enterprises encounter when many coders in many silos work on many components without talking to each other, I think there may be another way to look at the problem.

We all know having many people in many silos write CSS any old way doesn’t work, unless you consider bloat and poor performance working.

And while restricting how you allow people to write code solves some of these problems, it introduces others: too many class names is just another word for bloat.

So how about following the example of other creative endeavors, and putting a single mind in charge? After all, no matter how many disparate photographers, teamed with how many art directors, work on a given issue of a periodical, there’s always a lead art director who advises, helps plan shoots, and ultimately approves the work. Every orchestra requires a conductor. And no matter how many animators work on a film, there’s always a director. There’s a reason for that.

Imagine shooting a film with no director and no storyboards, in which each scene was written by a different screenwriter, and nobody knew the shape of the overall story. It wouldn’t make a coherent movie, much less a good one. Yet that’s how too many big organizations still approach front-end design and development.

So here’s a thought, big orgs. Instead of throwing a thousand front-end developers at your problem and seeing what sticks, consider creating a front-end director position as empowered as any other director at your organization.

Originally published at www.zeldman.com on May 24, 2016.

I’m Jeffrey. Follow me @zeldman. I publish A List Apart Magazine and A Book Apart “for people who make websites,” and co-founded An Event Apart: three days of design, code, and content for web & interaction designers. Most recently, I opened the NYC design studio.zeldman. Let’s work together!