Pedantic yet helpful nitpick: your links to the TypeKit blog and the Andrew Ingram’s ask are wrong.

(Malarkey says: Thanks Josh. Fixed now and I’m flogging the dwarfs who wrote that code.)

Phil’s question is one that I admit has never occurred to me, because I’m a developer and a designer (though more-so a developer). It does raise a good point, though I’d think the easy answer is that designers should just go learn HTML and CSS.

(I could see the difficulty: It would take two people to mock-up the site, and then if changes needed to be made it would take two people to make those changes.)

As for the font.
Overall, my reasoning is this: I’m designing a web-page, so there’s no reason I couldn’t use a screenshot of that text to mock-up the site. (Of course, I wouldn’t use it for other projects). But then, I haven’t been long in the typography world, so I have no clue what the standards or best-practices or social forms are. It seems a bit hard-line to me that a distinction is made purely on the physical system itself, rather than whatever the font is being used for.
(Is that what you meant? Or were you talking about people clipping text off their browsers whenever they wanted to use that font for a random project? Because that’s wrong.)

70%! That’s an impressive percentage.

So, if graphic designers should go out and learn to code, do you also think that (in reverse) coders should go and learn graphic design?

I wonder which would produce better results, a designer-come-coder, or a coder-come-designer?

Although I personally prefer the process of designing in the browser, I think suggesting that everyone ought to use this workflow is a bit heavy-handed. Everyone has different processes and workflows, and I know plenty of designers who get great results by doing static comps and then coding them (or having someone else code them). Your suggestion that everyone ought to be designing in the browser—that it’s the “right thing to do”—puts the process and workflow ahead of the end result. In my opinion, this is 100% backwards.

Personally, I don’t care how you get there. If the end product is a great user experience that’s reliable, maintainable, accessible, and beautiful, then you did your job. Period. It’s great that Andy and I prefer designing in the browser, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with talking about our methods and why we like them, but suggesting that this method is “right” and others are wrong is presumptuous, egotistical, and short-sighted.

That’s cool, Andy. I guess the tone was just a little too, “here’s how YOU should do it. This is the RIGHT way,” instead of, “here’s what I do, and it works for me, maybe you’ll like it too.”

I love hearing about other people’s processes and learning what I may be able to integrate into my own workflow, I just get annoyed when they make it sound like their way is the right way, and any other process is somehow “wrong” (c.f. Jason Fried).

> These are ways that work for me better than any other.

That’s awesome. But I think it’s important to recognize that just because they work well for you, doesn’t mean they’ll work well for everyone else. Everyone needs to find their own best approach. Hearing how you (and other designers) work is a great way to find new ideas towards that end. But let’s not get to the point where we’re saying, “this way is right, all others are wrong.” That doesn’t encourage innovation and experimentation with new ways of working—it limits it.

I prefer to design using BBEdit where I can see how the page will be rendered by webkit browsers. I do prefer the handy tools it offers for writing html, css and also picking colors etc. - but I still think of it as basically designing in a browser.

I do like to work in photoshop, illustrator and also with drawing - I go back and forth when I am starting to work on a site, but over time I know my process will evolve. I really like the idea of not showing any flat image stuff to the clients regardless of how much design work is done that way.

That had nothing to do with web font delivery services- or did it?