An excellent point raised over at Bokardo, which reminds us of a fact we sometimes lose sight of: that designers are marketers. Especially in web design, that’s a controversial point. Sure, the “tech geeks” who spend their days slinging pixels and hacking AJAX code tend to bristle a little at the marketing types, who breeze by in their suits and ties and golf tans on their way to another power lunch, but we have to acknowledge that the product of our work is the first thing every potential customer sees.
The thing that makes the boundary between web design and marketing so distinct is the kind of people each profession attracts. Marketers – the people who work in ‘sales’ – are a different breed. They’re social, talkative, interactive, open, friendly, and persuasive. Web designers, on the other hand, spend all of their time working with machines and designing abstract things like software and graphics on them. So they’re likely to be introverted, intellectual, solitary, analytical, and strong on communications but weak on personality skills.