I'm going to meet some designers next week and it's along time since I've worked with any (umm, yes, it does show). I thought I'd just get some background info first... Do designers need to know the system they are designing for, do they need to specialise in Nuke, e107, Xoops etc or do they just need to know that they're aiming for a standard 3 col or whatever? Do the designers that create skins for those systems and give them away to build their reputations actually find it's worth it? Do designers create the stylesheets etc and do they prefer table based, strict css, or hybrid systems? And yes, there will be many answers, but I'd appreciate the feedback.
I think it really depends on the designer and how much beyond designing they are doing. For example, a "pure" designer would probably design something in PhotoShop or other graphic tool, and hand it off to techies to actually code. - Shawn
Yep You wouldn't really see a designer get involved in the type of portrail by code. They may have seen something like Nuke and want to achieve that but that would be all. I'd be very surprised even if they said that they were able to code if they could! The first answer is probably not - but that is a very subjective question, and what is good for one person may not be the same for another, The second is a code question again - if they are using Adobe photoshop, as Shawn suggests, they will probably want tables but in the end I think that you will end up with a hybrid as the coder.