Design has never been about using Photoshop. This isn't a "2010 thing". Design is no more about Photoshop than it is pen, paper, or pixel. If you believe any different, you're deluding yourself.
I know how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, but would not consider myself a designer. The tools don't make the designer.
Design is about communication. That's all it's ever been and all it ever will be about (a user interface is a communication to the user how to interact with your product/idea).
Exactly. Some of the best designers I've ever met were absolutely terrible at interpersonal communication and were completely dependent on the project manager to talk to the client and figure out the communication problem.
There's a lot of iteration and specialization going on, and a lot of times I did a complete UX overhaul of what the graphic designer made while keeping his visual styling entirely, working almost exclusively with the art director and PM.
Slightly off topic; As a designer, I find it fairly interesting to see things from the other point of view on this board. It's this kind of boy/girl mutual insecurity where everybody thinks the other side is completely cool and self-assured, and I'm hiding here thinking "you guys want us too?". Believe me, for every startup that needs a designer, there's about six designers who need somebody technical to develop the designs.
Agreed... the previous comment goes to far. he might not have meant it to come across that way though. "Communication" is probably too general.
Design might be about communicating the experience to the user, but it is still about designing that experience in the first place. When you are at your computer mocking up your amazing designs, are you "communicating"
> Design is about communication. That's all it's ever been and all it ever will be about (a user interface is a communication to the user how to interact with your product/idea).
Yes, design is about communication. But communication and interaction don't happen in a vacuum. They are always conducted via some medium. On the web, that "medium" is generally visual graphics, copy, and interactive behavior.
But it's not enough for a designer to be proficient with just the "communication" aspect of design. A design (or more likely, a design team) must possess actual, specific competencies in those areas.
That is: Someone needs to be a good copywriter. Someone needs to be a good front-end developer. Someone needs to be good at rendering things visually (e.g. choosing colors, laying out elements, creating iconography).
The truth is there are very, very few people who are skilled in all of these areas. As a result, I think there is a need for visual designers who are extremely skilled with the tools of the web design trade (for now, that's Photoshop and Illustrator) AND who possess very strong abilities in visual design, but who do not necessarily have the responsibility for conceptualizing the interactive or other aspects of the application.
So while I do agree that there are a large number of projects that have suffered because someone just took an idea, dumped it into a graphic designer's lap and said "here, make me something like this that looks pretty" -- I think it is equally wrong to expect people with those very specific graphic design skills to be able to step up and take real responsibility for the conceptual design of the project.
I have a friend who is doing interaction design, and I see this as a more auspicious trend in the design profession. An interaction designer is someone who understands all of the disciplines that go into an application -- even if they are not proficient in them individually. The interaction designer then works with people who are skilled in their disciplines and orchestrates them into what is hopefully a better user experience.
Anyhow, hopefully this discombobulated rant makes some degree of sense.
This is true. If anyone is curious about why there is something specifically called "communications design", then (as opposed to "industrial design"): the simple difference is that something that is industrially-designed, although it communicates, is communicating information about itself—e.g., the shape of a car gives affordance to do something with the car. Meanwhile, communications design communicates a message about something external to itself (propaganda poster -> message about politics.)
I know how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, but would not consider myself a designer. The tools don't make the designer.
Design is about communication. That's all it's ever been and all it ever will be about (a user interface is a communication to the user how to interact with your product/idea).