I doubt that anyone noticed that Be A Design Group’s code is now valid HTML. Although the site doesn’t work any differently, and everything looks exactly the same, I feel like this was a real accomplishment. I don’t know about you, but the web design I do is nothing like the web design I learned in school. When I started out, web design was just a matter of slicing up large Photoshop images. Now the sites I work on rely so heavily on coding that sometimes I wonder if this is even design. Almost everything I know about building a website I have learned on my own by trial and error. As I have grown into the role of web designer, things like validation, usability and stylesheets have become increasingly important to me. Whether I like it or not, I have turned into something I never would have thought possible: a programmer. At least that is what it seems like. Troubleshooting HTML sure doesn’t feel like graphic design. I doubt that there are many graphic designers that got into web design because of the appeal of learning HTML. Maybe all websites should be designed in Photoshop, and then a programmer should be hired to build the code. We are designers, not programmers, right? Wrong. Like it or not, a good web designer is going to have to be a good programmer, too. Disagree? Drop me some comments…