Web designers and web developers are two of the most sought after professions nowadays and are in very high demand. And it may seem hard to become a web designer, but it isn’t as hard as it seems if you know the way. It would require time and effort on your part, with patience, perseverance and practice; but once done, you would soon find yourself making world-class websites and making good money on that.
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You don’t only learn from books and formal teachers. Take time to look at other well-designed websites by other designers. Go through the designs and the layouts used. Observe how the menus and content are aligned and positioned. This knowledge would help you when you start working yourself.
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Begin by getting a good graphics editor, say Adobe Illustrator or Fireworks. Graphics design can be easily learnt and understood through making images using image vectors. Inkscape would be a nice, free and open-source option for beginners, but eventually as you move towards becoming a pro, it would be best to spend some money on getting a proper editor like Illustrator or Fireworks.
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Becoming a web designer would require you to have a specific skill set. This would include XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as basic foundation skills. Mostly all websites would be written in a combination of these two. You could enrol at some classes in order to learn it or buy some books to teach yourself. XHTML controls the structure and CSS controls the appearance of the website. Neither of them involves programming. In order to learn the programming aspect about making websites you would have to learn JavaScript that takes care of all the client-side programming. All these skills would help you learn the server-side of making websites using the PHP.
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Learn and practice creating dynamic websites using MySQL and PHP. This would not require you to make individual HTML pages but help you display multiple pages through a template with the same design. Keep practicing on creating these.
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Save bandwidth and create interactive web applications by using dynamic web services like AJAX to utilize the server-side power of PHP without having the need to repeatedly refresh the page.
In order to become a good web designer, you need to create a productive website development environment on your computer itself reducing your dependency on internet. The job essentially revolves around internet, but the environment can be made more productive if you could install a web server on your computer itself so you could work on the scripts even without an internet connection.
Get hold of script examples, like Droopal or Joomla and try dissecting scripts. This will keep your skills sharp and hep you learn more. Web designing a very dynamic field, things change fast and you have to keep learning all the time even while you keep working.
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Start out with website ‘creation’ as soon as you know you would be able to do it. The sooner the better. Making websites takes considerable amount of time. And making a website is a great learning experience in itself. Even if things don’t turn out to be perfect the very first time, still take the first step and start. You can improve on the way and develop your own skills as you develop the website.
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The internet industry, as mentioned above, is a very dynamic industry and trends change fast. Figure out what services are the most popular at the moment and what are the new technologies and features that are in the pipeline and would be hitting the market soon. Research the kind of designs that are the most customer-friendly and how search rankings could be improved by incorporating search engine optimization while developing websites.
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Use a local development environment, which would be your own computer to design and develop the websites you are making. Only after they get finished and are approved and complete in all aspects, upload them to the website host, which would be your production environment.
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Inspirations are all around. Just keep your eyes and ears open. You could hit on that inspiration to build the next website while you are at Starbucks or just relaxing on the beach or going to sleep! The world is an inspiration for everyone who cares to see.
Web designers are in high demand in the market. And if you are good in the market, you could never go out of business. Just follow the steps outlines above and keep your eyes open. Talk to web designers you know or get introduced through your professional network. Get a hang of what you are getting into, and make an informed decision!
