w(h)ither the well-rounded?

Christopher Schmitt: What's your take on the state of the Web today compared to five years ago?

Jeffrey Zeldman: Five years ago, we were generalists. We met with the client, came up with the concept and architecture, did the high-end design work, did the purely mechanical graphic work, wrote the markup, did the programming, often wrote the content or much of it, did the testing, and performed the post-launch maintenance. Every member of the team was capable of doing any of these tasks.

Today most people in the industry are far more specialized. Flash artists versus developers versus information designers versus content people versus project managers versus usability consultants and so on. And I use the word "versus" advisedly, since too often there is hostility between these groups of specialists.

--from an interview in WebReview (June 2001)

As web sites have grown in size, they've grown in complexity. Whereas entire sites were once written in HTML by one person, these days you're more likely to encounter an entire crew of database programmers, information architects, usability consultants, "content" specialists, designers, and project managers. What has happened to all those generalists who, a few short years ago, had a handle on the entire process? Most of them were forced into management roles, according to pundits. And what of generalists today? Well, despite the business world's lipservice to the "well-roundedness" of liberal arts graduates, they still hire the MBAs and Economics majors, or in the case of the wired world, the CompSci grads. What can a web generalist hope for in terms of a career in the dizzying world of new media? Well, you can ask me.

I am the archetypal generalist. I hold degrees in theology and English literature as well as a teaching certificate. I have worked as a warehouse shipper/receiver, welfare caseworker, substitute teacher, computer salesman, and most recently, web worker. After feeling I'd finally "arrived" into a field I enjoyed, I was laid off after a year. The dot.com meltdown had taken my job before I'd really gathered enough experience to make getting another one anything less than a herculean trial. I have neither the programming chops to land a job as a "web developer" nor the traditional design skills and training to be employed as a "web designer." Because the company I worked for was a small one, whose history had been in print design, I'd not been exposed to a lot of other job functions. I worked under a senior "web designer" with little input into the design or functionality of sites. My kind is and has been expendable.

Realizing that firing at a moving target is extremely difficult, I haven't really put that much effort into "expanding my skill set." The tools are created by companies whose business plan is to force users into costly upgrades every 12 months. Publishers exist who also thrive on this yearly upgrade cycle. One could quickly burn through a few unemployment cheques trying to chase the elusive perfect skill set. Instead, I've focussed on things I can learn for free. HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can still be written with a basic text editor. Ironically, the same text editor can be used to write magazine articles. I've chosen to do both. I can create well-designed and well-written web sites with a minimal set of tools. I'm reminded of the medieval artisans and some of the pioneers of the Arts and Crafts movement of the last century. I've also been reading about the work of engraver, letterer, and font maker Eric Gill, and his ideas regarding the dignity of work. These men and women inspire me. They connect what I can do to what has gone before. And I am learning that the craft of web design is indeed a craft.