Great post Rachel, I agree with the both the post and Andy Budd’s views.

Here at Nine Four we tend to work in a similar way to you guys with a little more emphasis on Design. A large percentage of our work also comes from other design agencies. We found the best way to handle designs from designers who don’t always have “hands on” experience of XHTML / CSS is to have the designer produce a few design ideas, rather than designing the entire site, think of these designs as a starting point you can build upon.

We then take on the role of designer / UI design / developers and produce the XHTML / CSS and design the site in the browser. This give us a little more freedom to allow the design to grown into a fully functional website, sophisticated website.

Sometimes it takes a while for the designer/agancy to have the confidence to allow us to work this way, but once the relationship has matured it’s a great way or working. Both the designer and ourselves feel they are getting the best from the given job… everyones thoughts are taken on board and I hope we produce greater websites.

Bare in mind it can also go the other way too, some companies / designers supply every PSD and HTML template, whilst this works 90% of the time it can be a little restrictive, and if there are browser bugs to fix once the CMS is bolted on it can be a very frustrating time trawling through someone’s XHTML / Css, even if its written well it will take time to resolve.

Moving forward I’d like to think designers do take more of an interest in technology and gain some hands on experience. If they don’t do this however I think our above way of working provides just a rich end results.