WHY DESIGNERS SHOULD LEARN GIT
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I have the benefit of working as both a web developer and a designer. I’ve gotten to work with many talented designers and one thing that I find concerning/frustrating is that many of them don’t use a version control system.
I can tell you from experience that this is one of the most useful skills you can learn and it makes you more effective in your job. In particular, I recommend that you learn Git and set up a GitHub account.
Why hasn’t this happened yet?
I believe that two reasons why designers don’t/won’t learn Git is:
Git is a command line tool – It’s true that there are UI clients like the GitHub for Mac or Windows tool. But the real power of Git (I find) is in its command line usage. Most designers seem to shy away from anything requiring the use of a terminal.
Git is meant for source code – Absolutely. I’ve tried using Git to manage design files like PSD files and it’s just not made to do that. The real power of Git is in managing text files — namely source code.
Front-end web designers
If you are working with any front-end web design code — HTML/CSS/Javascript — you should learn a version control system. And I strongly recommend Git.
Be easier to work with!
By learning Git and Github, you’re actually making yourself much more marketable as you’ll be easier to work with. Thanks to Github and the open source community, Git is such a common version control system in use today that many companies are using it for their commercial projects.
The single biggest issue I find whenever we have worked with designers is that they typically have to work outside of the repository and deliver their files as HTML/CSS and rely on a developer to integrate their changes. This becomes extremely tedious as simple CSS/HTML issues that can be fixed in a few minutes instead require intervention by a developer to get the designer the latest files, then integrate changes in.
Stop it. Bite the bullet! Open your Mac terminal and learn Git!
Six commands to learn
You don’t need to be a genius to learn git. You just need to know six commands:
- git clone – This will clone a project repository on your hard disk. Voila! You now have all the files!
- git pull – This will update the repository. Voila! You have all the latest files.
- git status – Once you work on the project, git status will show which files have changed.
- git add – This adds your files to the project and stages them for commit. Learn how to use git add . (add everything) and git add -A (add everything including deleted files). Learn to not add everything without first checking git status so you don’t accidentally add unnecessary files.
- git commit – This commits your files you added.
- git push – This pushes the changes you committed to the central repository
And learn how to resolve merge conflicts.
I know…it’s a lot. But this will really help!
Why designers should learn Git
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