I am not a web designer. →

Jessica Hische ·

I might seem like a jack of all trades, but I’m really a specialist. I specialize in lettering, type design, and illustration–this is what I’m best at and is probably why you found my website in the first place. I find it strange that I get so many requests for web design–I went to school for graphic design, yes, but each sub-field of graphic design has its own set of problems, limitations, and guidelines.

Just as you wouldn’t expect any random person that owns Adobe illustrator to be able to draw a decorative letter from scratch, you can’t expect any print designer to be able to really and truly design for web. Web design is not print design, it’s a whole different and very complex animal. When a person encounters a book or brochure, they know how to use it. They look at the cover, they open the cover, and page by page they work their way to the end. Web design is, for the most part, not linear, and the way that people use and peruse the web changes constantly. To be a good web designer you must live and breathe the web. You have to pay attention to trends, read articles about best practices, essentially do whatever you can to stay relevant and current. If you don’t throw yourself head-first into the field, you end up making websites that feel “two years ago” or believing that Flash is still “The Next Big Thing”.

This link has been posted in retrospect from a collection of articles I compiled in 2012 using the iOS app, Instapaper.