Why They Skip Photoshop

[XLCowBoy]

Jason from the soon-to-be-infamous 37 Signals posted this recently:

Why We Skip Photoshop


And of course, a proper rebuttal was to be expected:
Why We Don't Skip Photoshop


Personally, I think Jason's forgotten that a rather large chunk of the industry exist to serve each other, unlike 37 signals, which, in varying degrees, exist only to serve themselves.

[RetroNetro]

I am not a graphic designer, but I too do not create the traditional mockups (I have but just not generally) that others do. I start with the HTML/CSS and make graphics one by one to fit the various parts of the layout, plus I use Fireworks.

[trishacupra]

Loved the rebuttal. I should write more rebuttal posts myself.

[bluedreamer]

Loved the rebuttal. I should write more rebuttal posts myself.

he he - go on, you know you want to

I find myself following the 37 method more often than not, how else can you give you client an interactive mockup that they click links on and use just like the real thing? As an example if I'm making a shopping cart site it's really useful for the client to see home page>catgeory page>product page in their web browser so they can get a real feel for the think working in real time - you can't do this with flat images while demonstrating things like link hovers and so on.

Of course there are times when an image mock up is appropriate, it really depends on the job in hand.

[ULTiMATE]

I had written a post about this story not that long ago. For those that are interested it can be found here.

http://blog.codingfresh.com/design/t...s-so-should-i/

For those that don't want to go to the link, my arguments are essentially that whatever works for them isn't going to work for us, because as designers we are all individuals with our own ideals. 37signals already have an overall design made; the one that is applied to all of their products. Why should they re-enter Photoshop when they've already got a pre-made design? Simple things like tables and placement doesn't need to be done in Photoshop.

I don't believe they're claiming that they've never used Photoshop before, just that they no longer have a need to when their applications will follow the same style either way.