I had a nice twitter chat with Harry Roberts about the word “craft” the other day and how it applies (or doesn’t) to web design. This also ties in nicely with a lot of the current conversation surrounding Pattern Labs, modular frameworks and systems.

Background reading:
Harry Roberts: The problems with ‘crafting’ code
Mark Boulton: I’m not a Craftsman
Mark Boulton: Design Abstraction Escalation

I don’t disagree with what Harry says and I definitely don’t want to set this up as an opposing position to a systematic software engineering approach to front-end code. It’s not.

I know where they’re coming from and it’s a good place, but personally, I don’t have those negative associations with the word “craft” that they seem to have.

I don’t see it occupying an opposing position to “engineered” and I don’t see it as quaint or old-fashioned, slow, self-indulgent or inefficient.

I see craft more as an attitude or an approach to making rather than any sort of methodology.

Let’s talk about Kitchens:

You can get lots of different types of kitchen.

Some are flat-pack, made of chipboard, made for DIY that you choose, measure up, assemble and install yourself.

Some are made from modular systems that you pick and choose from, often with the help of a ‘designer’. These come in lots of different finishes and colours, but are all essentially the same.

Some are designed and built for the specific space you have in your house, in consultation with you, for your family’s specific needs, by hand, by expert people.

You can see what I’m getting at.

“Craft” is the difference between the well-made mass-produced kitchen, and the bespoke kitchen that’s been designed and built for your very specific individual needs by experts.

If I’m designing a site for someone it needs to be made to solve their problems, their user’s problems, not someone else’s.
(Is this system right for this project? What is the best way of working for this team? What’s best for this client? for these people? for this budget?).

It’s the decisions that are bespoke.
It’s the process that contains the craft.

It’s not the code that’s crafted. It’s the end result.

In the end it’s just semantics, we bring our own meanings to these words, but the Craftsmen I’ve known have been highly professional trades-people, intensely skilled and efficient, not amateur tinkerers or self-indulgent hobbyists.

Maybe I’m attached to the word “craft” because of those people I respect.
I aspire to their mastery and level of skill in my own work.

That’s not such a bad thing.