Just curious—if you’re into frontend development but don’t consider yourself a creative person, is FE still the right job for you?
I know React, HTML, and CSS pretty well, but I wouldn’t say I have a strong eye for design. Since frontend devs often work with UX/UI designers who provide the designs, does creativity really matter? Or is it more about translating designs into code efficiently?
Would love to hear from others in the field—how much does creativity play a role in your day-to-day work?
There’s a difference between “I understand the mechanics of design and what to look for” and “I can design things”.
Also, I’ve been doing this job for 20 years, and I’ve yet to meet anyone, engineer or otherwise, who wasn’t creative. You might not be artistic, but, for the record, that’s a skill you can learn like anything else.
Source: I’m a lead software engineer with 20 years of experience, but I started my career as a designer with multiple art degrees. I just learned I liked building as much as design and dev work pays better.
@Aeron
Could you share any good resources to learn UX and UI? I’m a senior FE dev, and I would love to upskill myself in designing as well.
Tal said:
@Aeron
Could you share any good resources to learn UX and UI? I’m a senior FE dev, and I would love to upskill myself in designing as well.
Design is as much about art as it is technical. Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug have good books on UX thinking; Joseph Muller-Brockmann and Dieter Rams are great designers to help you think about design philosophy and how grid systems work. There’s an awesome book called ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ which is also worth reading.
Tal said:
@Aeron
Could you share any good resources to learn UX and UI? I’m a senior FE dev, and I would love to upskill myself in designing as well.
You could take a look at this https://www.refactoringui.com/
You can build things without being design-oriented on the appropriate team.
If you work in a larger organization or enterprise with distinct roles, then you’ll be fine. In an agency, freelance, or studio, you’d be expected to have some design ability.
I spent the past 10 years making custom time sheets, PTO, user management, and configuration systems. There are plenty of boring UX/UI tasks out there for you to tackle. They can be just as lucrative too, especially if you pick up some industry knowledge along the way.
I’m not sure creativity is terribly important. The key is being able to create user-friendly interfaces. This requires some knowledge of good and bad interfaces, as well as critical thinking about how a user will use your interface. Yes, this is the job of a UX team, but a FE developer will be much more valuable if they can assist or own some portion of this.
When I think of ‘creativity’ in FE, I think of choosing colors, sizes, padding, etc. I would say I am ‘uncreative’ when it comes to these things and have never felt it has negatively impacted my career. Either the designers can solve those problems, or people love to provide feedback on minor details during a review.
I don’t consider myself ‘uncreative’ as you describe. Design isn’t my strong suit, and I’d much rather have someone who is good at and enjoys UX/UI work while I focus on building the site.
Focus on your strengths.
Get a job at Microsoft or SAP.
I can’t design worth a damn, but I’ve been a gainfully employed full stack and sometimes dedicated frontend dev for close to 9 years. Love my designers and UX/UI engineers 
.
Yeah, I’ve never worked in a job where I had to do any graphic design. Almost all corporate, web, and app dev for decades. I’m super not good at design, and I really don’t have to be. I spend time explaining the concepts of responsiveness to designers to encourage them not to create print media-style designs for the web and ensure they have consistent components that we can build as reusable.
Being ‘creative’ as a front-end developer won’t land you any gigs at (big) companies that pay well. Each discipline has its own specialists, and the industry is structured that way. Get used to it, because those days are over. Only if you run your own shop or work within a small agency can you be a Jack of all trades.
Written by a conscious designer/developer.
Depends on the company. I’ve had jobs that expected me to do the design, and I’ve had jobs where there are 3 designers working together, and I just have to turn it into code. I’m not good at design, so I much prefer the latter.
We really need to rescue the meaning of ‘creativity’ from the ‘creatives’ who have somehow co-opted and conflated it with ‘artistic’ (which is definitely not Art, which they are largely not capable of producing). Creativity is not just visual, audio, etc.
If you’ve ever worked on any code, you’ve exhibited some degree of creativity—creating something from nothing. Especially so if you’ve had to shoehorn something into legacy spaghetti code, finding safe methods while accounting for all potential unintended effects. How many eons would it take the arts and crafts department to wrap their heads around that?
A car mechanic who deals with a rusted bolt is creative. Likewise taxi drivers, carpenters, and drug traffickers all exhibit creativity. Some (and perhaps even most) will just go through the motions, but those who succeed are extremely creative.
I’d argue that the capacity for creativity is one of the defining (and most fulfilling) characteristics of humans. You can be as well.
Just go to your favorite website and copy their design patterns.
Most use cases don’t require any particular design. You have 1-3 color palettes, then group and align the elements to deliver the actual features.
I often find those ‘backend engineer UIs’ fine; just put the essentials, make sure it works, and call it a day.
