posted
A highly practical skill with near immediate benefits is Web Design, I've realized, and its presence -- and my lack of skill thereof -- has been a specter for a great deal of my recent life. For one thing, I'm always coming up with these silly plans to make money, and having a website to peddle my wares would be nice. For another, when those schemes go bust, I need another way to make $, and designing websites is better than flipping burgers.
So, I'm gonna learn Web Design.
My question is as follows: Will getting a book and the necessary software than fiddling around for a hour or so daily for 1-2 months be enough to grasp the skill? Any general advice?
Thanks in advance =).
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
It depends. If you can rock a pair of khaki slacks and the necessary sunglasses, you can learn enough from a book to con people into paying you money. This doesn't mean you'll be competent, but it'll be another three or four years before the mainstream will be able to recognize a competent web designer.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Ouch. Well, a good starting point and a way to survery how much information is involved et al would be nice and much appreciated. If it's too intimidating, well, then I can always get the sunglasses and slacks.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
Web Design means several things (in no particular order):
Skill at making webpages look good.
Skill at structuring information on individual webpages.
Skill at organizing webpages into easily-navigated sites.
Skill at making websites accessible and usable.
Skill at making websites maintainable.
And several other things.
Some web designers try to do all of the above very well. Others focus on one or another aspect; this typically means working on sites for which that aspect is more important or teaming up with web designers capable of attaining quality in the other aspects.
If your aim is just to earn $ with little time expenditure, you probably want to pick something else. Even if you don't take the time to hone your web design skills beyond the basics (which would be irresponsible to your customers), networking to find customers takes a lot of time.
Of course, it is still possible. Start by working your way through the w3schools.com tutorials in the following order: HTML, CSS, XHTML (look in the upper left). Don't just read through the tutorials; try everything that's mentioned on a webpage/website of your own.
Afterwards, take a look at the CSS Zen Garden. It holds good examples of practical CSS design techniques, though the HTML involved lends itself to some techniques more than others, meaning certain more complicated fluid designs aren't represented. Don't expect to come anywhere near the CSS Zen Garden level anytime soon (they also tend to focus heavily on included graphics, which I tend to lean away from for a variety of reasons, but they can definitely look very nice).
If you want an example of something you will be able to attain with a moderate bit of work, take a look here: http://mypage.iu.edu/~rduhon/raphael/ . That's a site I and another guy (who had never even met before that day) put up for a web design contest in the space of three hours or so. I did the HTML + CSS and general layout design, he worked on the particular graphics (mainly the header), color scheme, and various minor tweaks.
After doing those tutorials, you should make a simple personal site. First, focus on the semantic structure of your site -- how is the information organized. Pick what will be on each page, then divide up each page into sections (probably several common sections between the pages, with a changing content section).
Then write HTML that exactly reflects those sections using appropriate HTML elements -- divs in some cases, but possibly other things. Menus are lists. Tabular data goes in tables. Headers are in h tags as appropriate. Paragraphs go in p tags. More specific textual content might have a more specific tag; use the references on the w3schools site. Do not use the b tag or other purely stylistic tags. Use em and strong cautiously, and only where you mean emphasis or strength in the text.
Its easiest to start with one page with dummy content in it.
Now beginning working on your CSS. Use CSS techniques to arrange the elements that you have in your html. This may involve slightly modifying your HTML to accomodate what you want the page to look at, but the overall structure should remain unchanged. This is also the part you will find most difficult, depending on the particular effect you wish to achieve. Beyond arranging the elements, you will also be changing certain aspects of their look and behavior. At this point you might start finding articles on http://alistapart.com/ helpful.
This: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/ and this: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dropdowns/ are classic articles on menus, for instance. There are many more. Use the search on A List Apart liberally, and read their articles regularly (ideally nearly every article, every issue, if you want to become a paid web designer). You will slowly develop a host of useful techniques.
You can also start learning javascript at this time. The w3schools.com javascript tutorial is a good starting place. Javascript will provide the last small touches you might, occasionally, add to a website. Judiciously applied javascript (and I do not mean Web 2.0 stuff, which is completely different) can significantly improve user experience without compromising accessibility or usability.
Another area you can start really polishing over time to great effect (probably even better effect than javascript) is your typography. A List Apart has numerous excellent articles here: http://alistapart.com/topics/design/typography/ .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
My advice is to check out the source code of any web page you come across that has something interesting to you. And learn CSS. It's amazing what you can do with it when you really figure it out. I've done two web pages for work (Since I'm the only one who had any experience at all doing it...all of one class that I went to for 2 weeks but still got an A in).
They're not great by any means. I'm not a very clean web designer yet (nor am I 100% sure of how well I handle usability...but the bosses liked it, so there it is), that's for sure, but I'm working on it Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Fugu's post is a fantastic list of resources to start with - I heartily second it. Also, consider picking up some books on Graphic Design - the visual principles you learn will help give your websites that extra polish that will set you apart from the rest of the "self-taughts".
My favorite little book on Graphic Design is The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type by Alexander W. White . It's short, clear, and exceptionally well written. It's the kind of book you read over and over again, and learn something new every time, but it's short enough to keep that process from becoming tedious. You should be able to pick it up from your local iteration of Amazon or whatnot for cheap.
Posts: 353 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Wow, this is simply astonishing. I don't quite understand why you guys here are so willing to spend a long time writing well formulated, informative and helpful posts, but you do, and, wow, thanks.
A lot of useful information, and I'm going to have to carefully look through it/work through it.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Something fugu brought up--learning website design doesn't necessarily mean you're going to start making money doing it. Securing clients and then fulfilling their needs takes a lot more than just knowing HTML, CSS, image preparation, and everything else that goes into actually building the site. You're a marketer and business owner first and foremost. You have to learn to market your services effectively, build a network of potential clients, and then work like a dog to find interested clients and fill your work pipeline. You have to learn how to sell your services when you do get in front of a client. Competition in web design and related fields is intense. There are always people out there as good or better than you, offering the same or better services. You have to figure out what makes you stand out to your target market and how to present that in a way that makes them feel good about parting with their hard-earned money for your services.
On the other end, if you do get a client, you have to learn how to gather the right information, create meaningful content, and bring together everything the client needs in the site. Unless you're working with a large company and a well-developed marketing/advertising department, your client will probably depend on you to know just how to make them shine. Small clients won't know what they need to give you so you can do a good job. Often you have to pry the necessary information out of your client. You have to know exactly what you need so you can ask the right questions, and then you have to be persistent. You might have to bring in other contractors to build what the client needs. You might have to renegotiate. In every case, when you are handed a project, you have to do your homework or you won't fully satisfy your client. And you'll find that your most lucrative business in the long run is built on satisfied, loyal clients.
It's certainly doable, but it's not a get-rich-quick strategy if you're starting from square one.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Unless you have an unusually good sense of aesthetics and UI design and/or unusually good business acumen, don't bother trying to become a web designer for money. The market is extremely oversaturated.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Other than the advice on how to actually do Web site design and all that - here's some advice on when you are setting up appointments with clients. If a client wants you to do a sample site and you need to do research, leave enough time to do your own research. Don't e-mail the editor of the local newspaper asking for any information they have on that company. Especially just before the weekend when the appointment is on Monday. (yep, true story)
And, I'm glad this thread was started. I haven't worked on my personal site in a couple of years but I've been reading up on CSS and trying to figure out what I want to do with it.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I took his advice on all things webby, and while my site isn't the shizznit...he did TRY to educate me.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
To comment on something CaySedai mentions in passing: never do spec work. That means, never do more than minimal work for a client without a contract specifying you will be paid for that work (not you maybe will be paid, you will be paid), and how much (this can be a lump sum or hourly rate).
Anyone trying to get spec work out of you is exploitative (though they often don't know it, which is frequently even worse, because they'll completely undervalue your work).
You should build up a portfolio of existing work (even if it isn't for a real client). They can use that to evaluate your capabilities, along with some short discussion and a few quick sketches or descriptions of what you intend to do. Then there should be a contract, specifying payment, deliverables, deadlines, et cetera.
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