Smells like web spirit
“A print designer who expects to succeed online...needs to be motivated by the medium’s possibility...”
In learning a new medium, enthusiasm and open-mindedness trump nearly everything. A print designer who expects to succeed online, or even expects to master the skillset, has to be one who eagerly devours information about the medium, who peeks at the source code of Web pages that fascinate her, who spends her after-work hours experimenting with self-directed projects. This person needs to be motivated by the medium’s possibility, and not solely by the fear of losing a job in print.
This is why a fundamental understanding of HTML and CSS is so crucial; such knowledge provides the means to begin experimenting, to begin understanding how a page is put together, how it is delivered to a browser, how it behaves and, crucially, how the designer’s intention maps to how it is used by real people. Without that basic sense of curiosity, that insatiable desire to experiment and understand new ways of doing everything, the Web isn’t much fun at all, regardless of how much experience a designer has under her belt. Just as is true with most everything in life, it’s hard to get good at something unless you’re having fun.
