Is it still us vs them?

I have been a web designer since 1995. Not a typo. There really were non-hackers making this industry up as we went long before The Matrix. (Google it)

However, being in such a nascent field, we knew we held this weird second-class status in the world of design. But don't ever question it - we’ve always been designers.

Getting an Ivy League Philosophy degree followed by an MFA in theatrical lighting design, I figured there was nothing to lose when things didn’t work out as I hoped. Call it hubris, call it na?veté, call it delusion. Web OG's (now “pioneers”) never called it “Using Transferable Skills?”. We just threw ourselves headfirst into the Photoshop 1.0 and HTML breach without too many questions.

And yet, we weren’t seen as real designers by the Black Turtlenecks, as I called them. Even in 2006 at my first design conference, being surrounded by other creatives was amazing, but I was the only web designer in the pack. I guess the (second-class) cheese stands alone.

29 years later, people are getting degrees in web design, new industries birthed from a create-your-own-adventure world are now as ubiquitous as breathing (oh hai again, Google), and the Black Turtlenecks have added “UX” to their resumés.

But compared to other designers, could we still be considered second-class citizens? What was the millennial SCAD-educated colleague thinking when she congratulated me on “getting as far as I had without formal training”? Didn't she know I built her industry from nothing?

Which brings me to this great piece (and the original repost from 2000) written by the ultimate web OG and digital patron saint, Jeffery Zeldman. Show me a web designer from back in the day who doesn't feel this deep in their soul:

Which was the real design? The widescreen, multicolor, grid-based experience? Or the 216-color job with pixelated Windows type, a shallow “fold,” and pictures of headline text that took forever to be seen? Some designers began to take usability, accessibility, and performance seriously as part of their jobs; others fled for the predictability of more settled media (such as print).

But that's what drove us to solve problems in the first place (which is really all that design is). It's time for a reminder of who we are. No Black Turtlenecks for anyone, just innovation. Let's do better.

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