During my first interview for a web related job, I was asked if I was a designer or a developer. My response? “I’d say I lean very slightly more towards design. But, truthfully, given enough nurturing or experience, I could be both.” Is that an incorrect answer? Or does it make me a web prodigy? I didn’t get the job, but the topic crept up on twitter this week in a conversation between @karolijn and @kevinvanlierop. Here’s my take.

What’s a designer?

In my experience, those referred to as “designers” in the web industry are those who “make stuff pretty.” They spend most of their time in Photoshop, Fireworks, or other graphics editors, and create beautiful pages like this. They’re the people tweaking the CSS, gathering stock source images, and crawling CSS Galleries for inspiration.

Okay, so what’s a developer?

A developer is a coder. They spend most of their time looking at pages upon pages of code, writing functions, SQL queries, and editing database content. They create the function while the designers work on the form.

So, someone can’t be both?

No, not according to a lot of people. But I see things differently. While both disciplines require a different mindset, I don’t feel that one can’t switch between the two. I’ve spent hours writing code, and hours adjusting the most minute pixel-level detail of an image in Photoshop. Just as a musician can be good at mathematics even though both things require different mindsets, a designer can be a good developer. I’m not saying it isn’t rare though. I know several people who couldn’t have designed the Google homepage from 1999, yet are some of the most skilled developers I’ve ever seen.

The Google homepage, circa 1999. Yea, it’s ugly.

While someone who can do both is certainly plausible, companies looking to hire should know what they want. Just as it did @karolijn, it frustrates me when companies post jobs for web designer/developers. Most of the time these companies are not expecting a jack-of-all-trades type, but need something specific done.

That aside, does the belief that people can be capable of both make me a rarity? Or am I just ill-informed? Let me know how you feel in the comments.