I’m working as a freelance web developer in my spare time. I consider myself as a skilled developer but my graphical skills are very limited.
Today I had a meeting with one of my long time clients whom I have a really good relationship with.
Because this jobs requires a good looking and very graphical website we had also hired a graphical designer. When she asked me how I wanted her design I said that anything would do. As long as I could see the design, got the required images, and the with and width and height of everything was written down somewhere.
She was very surprised that I would “code it from the ground and up” and said that at her work the developers always wanted a layered photoshop-file with the design where they could “cut (and paste) it into the website”.
Fortunately the client trusts me, but it all sounded like I was doing a lot of redundant work. She doesn’t know anything of programming (or even HTML) but I’m very curious of what she meant, but this meeting wasn’t the place to start a discussion about it. Do you have any idea? I’ve never been working at a larger company doing web development but why would these guys want the design as a photoshop file? instead of a picture/illustrator file or whatever?
It all depends on the client’s experience with websites and projects of the same nature. Some clients can be unaware of what the whole process of creating a website includes, and can lead to some very weird requests, questions or comments about the work.
The misconception in this is that she doesn’t mean to say “cut (and paste) it into the website” at all.
I would assume the developers that are more used to slicing and dicing a web design from a PSD file are more comfortable in doing so, than having to deal with vectorized elements in illustrator (or similar).
I used to work at a company where every page design came from the client-hired advertising agency or graphic designer (I’m not sure where they came from), and were 75% quality .jpeg files, instead of sliced images that are easier to plug into the design.
I always ask for a photoshop document, because it allows me to play with the layers of the design enough to make sure they are cut into the appropriate shape, and that they keep (where needed) their alpha channel (transparency).
Photoshop documents give more flexibility, and allow the developer to optimize the material themselves, instead of the graphic designer. Developers know what they need and where to get them from, graphics designers might not know exactly which kind of images are best suited for a specific design.
Hope this clears up at least some confusion. 🙂