I’ve been reading a bit about technologies that affect how I create graphic design work online. There are quite a few things to take into account, and at times it can be overwhelming just keeping up with the names of technologies. HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, JavaScript, SVG, Objective-C. If you are a graphic designer and your eyes glazed over on that last sentence you’re not alone–nor can I blame you!
I read about these technologies and I really don’t know where to start. The last two technologies I spent a good deal of time learning were Flash and CSS. Both of these were technologies that I was able to jump in and be “functionally illiterate” as it were, meaning I could create things that functioned well while learning at the same time.
Maybe it’s the plethora of new technologies at one time, but I don’t feel as capable of doing that with what I mentioned above. And frankly it doesn’t seem all that fun (Objective-C and iPad app development, I’m looking at you here!). I’m perfectly willing to start at a “Step 1″ somewhere, but that’s where the path gets a little murky – where to start with each of these? I’ve read overviews, tutorials, specs and guides and some of them just don’t seem (at least to me) to have a great “jumping in” point to help you ramp up quickly.
Perhaps this comes from the goals I have when I set out to learn these. I’ll use HTML5 as an example (or rather HTML5 plus CSS3 plus JavaScript since that’s actually what many refer when they talk about a “Flash killer”). I will admit that my goal when learning HTML5 is not to necessarily have a strong semantic grasp of code. My first and foremost goal is to create a piece of graphic design. So I approach learning HTML5 not so much from a “what does this tag do, what does this piece do” place but more from a “how do I make this piece draggable, how do I make this graphic move” place. This approach sometimes creates holes in my knowledge I have to back-fill, but for the most part works for me.
To put it differently, I prefer to point and click with the occasional writing as opposed to writing with the occasional point and click. That’s the way I’m wired. Unfortunately as some designers and developers put it to me today I will find few examples of the technologies I’m looking into that are wired the same way I am. And the point that continually came up was not having any sort of WYSIWYG way of creating the things I’m thinking about. I think I’m going to see what I can do about changing that. Stay tuned, more on that later.
In the meantime I will post various experiments, assignments, and discoveries here to poke at. Some will be successes, and some will be learning experiences. None will be failures.
Tags: css3, graphic design, html5, web design