Advise on Web-design

pauLAW

pauLAW

pauLAW

Associate
Joined
17 Jan 2011
Posts
946
Location
Manchester
Hi

Going back to 2008 I had completed my Level 2 and Level 3 advance web page design courses at night collage. This got me 2 city and guilds certificates for HTML/CSS. The course mainly gave me skills on understanding HTML and CSS coding, I could quite confidently open up notepad and start typing away a basic web page using HTML and CSS tagging.

I have picked up my own basic skills over time using Adobe Photoshop where I have created, Logos, Banners etc, I have also some basic skills using Dreamweaver.

I am looking for some advise on how I can develop my skills further and hopefully some day end up in a job doing webpage design/coding.

My understanding is to build yourself a portfolio, maybe get some webpage and put some work on the net but I think I would require some more training to help me develop my skills while I attept to build up some sort of portfolio.

Please could anyone possibly point me in the right direction in terms of courses I might need to take, OU?

Thanks for you time.
 
You don't need official courses.

Just start learning PHP or ASP.NET and see what you can do using the thousands of tutorials available on line.
 
See....Now I dont fully understand how PHP or ASP.NET gets involved. I take your advise and I will read up on them to find out for myself, I dont expect anyone to come and tutor me I just thought its worth me asking guys on here, guys that actually work in this area and have come from where I am today.

When I finished my 2 courses at college my tutor said to me...thats all you can do at college now, so I just thought......maybe there is some other kind of OU course or something that is going to help me in terms of CV building and getting hands on teaching.
 
Take a look at w3schools if you want to learn the basics of the different languages to get started. Probably the easiest way and then try to think of something you wish to achieve and try to build it :)
 
I would like to start by creating my own website.....start doing some bloging etc.

I will start to read up as you say and your right w3 schools is a good place to start I have been using this for some time.

Any more advise is welcome, thanks again.
 
Decide if you want to be a designer or a developer. Then follow that path.

You can do both but it might be best to focus on one for now.
 
FabienO said:
Decide if you want to be a designer or a developer. Then follow that path.

You can do both but it might be best to focus on one for now.
Click to expand...

This is the question I struggle to answer myself!
I would say I do more enjoy the design aspect of it but again I lack training on this, I would like to maybe attend a photshop course to do this at some time but again its just something I need to sit down and do in my spare time.

The coding site I am also interested in, I like want to be able to cut up my designs from PS and turn them into a website.... decisions decisions.
 
If you want to be a developer you'd need to be able to do more than just slice up the HTML. While you could get a job doing that, it wouldn't be well paid, and they're certainly wouldn't be much progression.

If you did want to go the developer route I'd suggest learning a server side language, such as PHP or ASP.Net(C#) and getting a good grounding in relational database design.

While it's good to learn HTML, CSS and JS, it's a means to an end.
 
Personally I believe the designer role is faster, but will be less well paid than developer.

I want to be a developer. It's not easy finding jobs either (around here). When you join a company as a developer, you need to be quite skilled, unless you're lucky enough to join as a junior.

I can comfortably code and create a basic blog site. I still don't feel like I am qualified enough to get a job. I'm probably not creative enough to become a good designer too :P
 
Besides from me playing around in photoshop what else would a designer do to learn? its mostly about being creative which I can be?
 
pauLAW said:
Besides from me playing around in photoshop what else would a designer do to learn? its mostly about being creative which I can be?
Click to expand...
Design != Creating Pretty Pictures.

Design == Solving Problems (where the solutions sometimes involve Creating Pretty Pictures).

Just in case you were under the common misconception :)

To develop design skills to a level of genuine proficiency, you'll need to look at a graphic design course. Web design courses can teach you all the markup and Photoshop shortcuts in the world, but I've yet to see one that spends time teaching the fundamentals of graphic design [form, colour, typography, context, layout, communication, and so on].

Having said that, here's two more nuggets:

1. Web Designers very rarely get paid what they're worth, considering the broad skillset
2. Most employers wouldn't know a good designer if one came up and stole their chips, so an under-developed design knowledge may not necessarily be a hindrance towards getting your foot in the door.
 
Sticking with the design aspect then....I am right in saying most people use MAC's for designing these days?. I hear about certain software thats kind of MAC only etc? I am and have always been PC minded...I know I can do the work on a PC but I will be looking into a new laptop in the near future so its something I need to consider.
 
The only reason designers harp on about needing a Mac these days is because they know that if they didn't, they'd get the same cost-cutting pov-spec PC kit as the receptionists ;)

It used to be the case that Macs were more suited to print publishing, for subtle technical reasons, but thankfully those days are gone.
 
Glad to hear it because Apple just seem to bend over there customer and give them a good seeing too!......harsh way of saying they are expensive!

I will get stuck into photoshop and doing my work but some sort of teaching is going to be needed I think
 
simisker said:
The only reason designers harp on about needing a Mac these days is because they know that if they didn't, they'd get the same cost-cutting pov-spec PC kit as the receptionists ;)
Click to expand...
It's not funny because it's true :(

The designers get 27" fully specced iMacs worth about £2500 each.

I've got a crappy dual core intel worth about £300. Does have about 12Gb of ram that I've salvaged from old machines though.
 
All great advice so far :)

PHP and ASP means that you design and build interactive web pages, form processing, interacting with a database and much more besides.

I did the same level 2 and 3 for the C&G certificates in 2007-08 then quit work to do a full time degree which is now at coming to the end after lots of hard work :eek: although I must stress that a degree is not really necessary (a mate of mine is entirely self-taught in ASP, SQL databases and the rest) nor is it for everyone.

We have covered aspects of design such as typography (very important), colour theory, composition, trends etc. as well as developing projects in Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator. Other topics included AJAX, XML and mobile devices.

I think the important thing would be to work through the excellent online tutorials out there to get familiar with the concepts. Here is a great one for PHP on YouTube to get started with PHP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62h6Wr7heXk&feature=relmfu
 
A few designers now use windows computers as cheaper and work as good if not better, some also use mac minis and others with there 27" imacs.. It don't matter, just down to what you like to use.. I went from pc to a mac mini as I wanted more room and I stoped playing games..

As for what path, do what you enjoy doing.. but I would learn php and MYSQL and get better in photoshop and illustrator so you got a range of skills.. and most designers and developers are self tought threw books and online tutorials lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom