A lot of people ask me what I do, when I tell them I’m a Front-End Web Designer. I’m so glad that Brad Frost managed to explain what Front-End Design actually is. Now I can finally tell my mom what I do .. 😊
I just want to highlight some of the parts of his article ‘Frontend Design’, that really defines best what a Front-End Designer does on a daily basis:
Somewhere between design – a world of personas, pixels, and polish – and engineering – a world of logic, loops, and linux – lies frontend design. Frontend design involves creating the HTML, CSS, and presentational JavaScript code that makes up a user interface”
A frontend designer (who may also go by UI developer, client-side developer, UI engineer, design engineer, frontend architect, designer/developer, prototyper or unicorn) lives in a sort of purgatory between worlds:
- They understand UX principles and best practices, but may not spend their time conducting research, creating flows, and planning scenarios.
- They have a keen eye for aesthetics, but may not spend their time pouring over font pairings, comparing color palettes, or creating illustrations and icons.
- They can write JavaScript, but may not spend their time writing application-level code, wiring up middleware, or debugging.
- They understand the importance of backend development, but may not spend their time writing backend logic, spinning up servers, load testing, etc.
Posted by Brad Frost on 17 Feb, 2016, .. so now go and read the whole article Brad has written on his website.
frontend design