Making sense of CSS from a print design perspective
For graphic designers who design for the web but do not code their own web pages, how their pages end up displaying can sometimes be frustrating. The nice thing about print is that when you smear ink on paper it generally stays there. But web pages tend to get distorted. We've written a couple of newsletters (Web Design Tips for the Print Designer part 1 and part 2) giving particular advice to print designers as they make the transition to the web. CSS is something designers should be aware of because any style that's defined via CSS may, in some cases, or in some browsers, look a little different that it does in Photoshop. This is the cost of doing design on the web. Utilizing CSS as much as possible maximizes both efficiency and flexibility. But for every design, there is a tension between using dependable CSS attributes versus hard coding workarounds. Newfangled exists to help designers contend with these realities and to put our experience to use to find coding solutions that can faithfully represent a designer's layout, yet make the resulting website work well.
We'll always be providing some pressure toward web standards. However, we know that in many cases design trumps coding efficiency - we're cool with that. The art of the process is finding ways of doing both. This sometimes requires creative options, or innovative techniques. Making sure our design partners understand the value of CSS can help us work together more effectively toward solutions that benefit the website and champion the designer's vision.
