It is a shame, that so few designers actually know the medium they are working with well, let alone the primitives, that they are operating on top of (CSS layouts). If they did, I think we would have many less shitty website designs. Personally, I would expect someone who calls themselves a "web designer" to know HTML and CSS of course, and in a more or less up to date fashion. Well, not really would expect, but would hope. Building flying air castles in Figma is not really a work that requires high qualification, and reality catches up with those fantasies, when the web dev is told to implement them.
How many web designer (ie. strictly HTML + CSS) roles are out there anymore? Anytime a position is posted with "HTML and CSS" in the requirements, you can almost guarantee a Javascript framework of some sort is in there as well.
That’s not the point - it’s been at least a decade since “web designer” means doing graphic/interaction design, and not coding in HTML and CSS.
What they are saying is that, in the same way a car designer cannot do a great job without having decent knowledge of aerodynamics and the physics involved, good design for the web requires some understanding of the underlying technologies.
