One of the biggest misconceptions about designers (and usually Webdesigners) is that we’re
just
Web designers — that the scope of our skillsbegins with Lorem ipsum and ends with HTML emails. This is ridiculous.Everyone in this industry fills dozens of roles throughout a given day. On acall with a prospective client, we take the role of salesperson. After thecontract is sorted, we become researchers, combing through the client’soutdated website, looking at analytics and identifying breakdowns androom for improvement. Soon after, we become content curators, wadingthrough the piles of content in PDF format sent by the client, identifyingwhat works and what doesn’t.Then we’re architects, laying out content to get the most importantmessages across, while ensuring that everything in our layouts remainsfindable. We design the website itself. We manage client expectations andwork through revisions. We write code. We introduce a contentmanagement system. We carefully insert and style content. We create andupdate the brand’s presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We help tocreate an editorial calendar to keep content fresh and accurate. We check inon the analytics and metrics to see how the website is performing.Notice that “design” is mentioned only once in all of that work
