The Specialist’s Web

“Back in the day people went to one doctor for everything. Now, people go to a specialist.” -Tyme White

While reading an interesting article on drawar.com titled You are a manipulator, the first comment in the discussion really got me thinking. Tyme White (@Tyme), the comment’s author, suggests that just as other industries have fallen into extremely specialized arenas, so too will web design.

It’s an interesting concept. Just as engineers and developers can specialize in a particular development language, imagine if designers specialized in specific areas of layout or design. Picture header designers, sidebar designers, footer designers and navigation experts. Even more granular, drop shadow experts, gradient experts, and button experts. We already have logo specialists, typography specialists, icon designers, color analysts, information architects and so on.

Fundamentally, I would like to believe that as an industry we won’t fear more designers, but embrace them. Being against “design by committee” isn’t a justified reason to shy away from something new. Would this specialized design industry cause a “too many cooks in the kitchen” type scenario? Personally, if I saw a talented designer’s portfolio that specialized in sidebar layouts, I wouldn’t disregard their work because our team already has amazing designers, I’d reach out.

By further specializing the design world, we’d be opening the door for millions of future designers, tons of innovation and even deeper collaboration with each other.

filed in Design