I'm a complete newbie when it comes to web designing. I would like to know about the role of a web designer on a project. If we are to take StackOverflow as an example, what role would a person like Jeremy play? Is it restricted to giving suggestions about the look and feel of the site by providing a mockup or is it more deep?
Also, at what stage does the person get involved in a project?
Thanks.
Website designers I work with are their purely to create the design - none of the implementation whatsoever.
I ask them to create a design and pass it to me as a layered .psd or .ai file so I can pull it apart and do the implementation and web programming
Previously when I have allowed web designers to mess with HTML themselves, they have royally buggered things up.
It can go many ways, and often its based on the company the person works for.
The designer should be the first person in and the first person out of a project. When the design is completed it can not be changed later on.
Ie. the Designer for us turns in a layered PSD file of the site with the look for every sub section of the website in a hidden photoshop layer.
Then i as the programmer cut the PSD and html/css the site, and then add the logic and system.
In many companies the designer cuts html and css's the page and then a programmer comes on later to add the logic and system components.
The answer to this question is somewhat contingent upon the circumstances of the hired designer. I don't think that there can be a clearly defined set of responsibilities - after all, I know developers who do design work (good and bad), and vice versa. That said, here are some of the more common set of responsibilities:
Designers who create mockups of sites. At the most basic level, I've seen designers who do nothing more than put together page and site prototypes using Photoshop. They are then passed along to another team to be 'cut up' and produced into actual functioning pages.
Designers who create mockups and implement them. More often than anything else, designers are responsible for coming up with an original design and then translating them to actual pages. This usually involves doing prototyping, then developing the XHTML and CSS or Flash to get the site put together.
Designers who implement mockups. Although this is technically getting into the realm of a web developer, I've seen designers who basically take mockups handed to them via a design team and create the pages from said design. Personally, I find this a misleading title and don't particularly agree with it; however, it exists so I felt it worth sharing.
Above all else, designers are normally people that have a formal background in design. Too often, it seems, that developers play double duty in coming up with UI design and then software designer. Programmers are - at least typically - not designers and it's evident. Similarly, designers are not developers and should not be expected to write code.
Web design is definitely not just about look and feel. There are various other fields designer of web sites should be aware of, that are specific for the web:
That were just few things that came to my mind as first. What is a web designer really responsible for depends on his working enviroment, though. If you work as a freelancer, you maybe handle the design, coding it into HTML and CSS as well as everything else. On the other side, there are surely big companies, where there is a place for both an interaction designer and web designer roles. Anyway, my point here is - a web designer should never be responsible only for the overall aesthetic feel of what he/she is doing.