Advise on Web-design

pauLAW · 15 Mar 2011 at 10:09

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.

pauLAW · 15 Mar 2011 at 10:32

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.

pauLAW · 15 Mar 2011 at 12:55

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.

pauLAW · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:23

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.

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.

pauLAW · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:05

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 · 15 Mar 2011 at 16:13

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.

pauLAW · 15 Mar 2011 at 16:54

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

pauLAW · 16 Mar 2011 at 10:11

Broadie said:
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 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

Thanks for this, I will check out the you tube clip when I get home from work....they block most sites