Newbie Web Designer - 33 & starting from scratch - Need Advice

The problem with elance and the like is that you're competing with people in the far east who have tiny overheads. Not bad to get some work under your belt.....but don't do what too many people do in tech, and undersell yourself!

FWIW I would start out learning how to install, configure and customise Wordpress and/or Joomla, along with the fundamentals of HTML/CSS, and understanding of responsive layouts. Plenty of demand for that kind of work.
 
Yeah, I had a look at Elance following on from this thread, and it was just full of Indian developers, I've no idea how you would break into that unless you massively undersell yourself to start with to get a foot hold in it, but then it's almost bordering on worthless doing it.

The courses I did at college on an evening course were just the basic principals of HTML/CSS and very light PHP (Dreamweaver was used to do most of the work with connecting to the database for example).

After that I spent a little time on CodeAcademy doing the courses there, but I grew frustrated with doing it right, yet the submit button saying it was wrong, I found I kept pressing submit and eventually it would work, very frustrating.

I then just ditched that and started reading a few of the Missing Manual books on HTML/CSS/PHP, along with Learning PHP/MySQL JavaScript & JQuery by Robin Nixon. I also read HTML & CSS - Design and Build Websites b Jon Duckett (he has got a Jquery & Javascript book to which I haven't got).

I haven't read those books cover to cover but the have been helpful for reading over sections that I've come across in my job to guide me in the right direction.
 
Small update here, I had a email last week from a company in California for a junior designer role that paid $75k and would they would relocate me to the States. I done a little design challenge and apparently did well but they decided they needed a senior designer. Oh well, was a nice confident boost and I built on that design challenge and popped it on my portfolio (It's the latest one).

https://dribbble.com/mshanda

I should have my portfolio website built in the next week or two, so hopefully it'll help me land some new clients.

How's it going for you guys, anybody else here freelancing?
 
Good to see people getting into this line of work after teaching themselves. I spent 9 years in the staircase industry and then changed to iOS development, a few years later I'm now the principal developer of a large team overseeing multiple projects in one of the biggest digital agencies in London. Best change I ever made.

If I could give any advice from what I've learnt along they way it would be this; always try to learn something new, never settle for knowing just enough to get by. Also keep your eyes open to whats happening on other platforms and other areas of software development, its amazing some of the ideas people come up with that you can apply to your own work.
 
Just seen this pop up again so thought I would comment.
@Black Dynamite and Tilluss would it be ok if i Trust you some time?
My background was uni in the days when tables were still used for designs. Highlight was building a space invaders clone using Adobe Director. From there I went on to support, specifically Virtual Learning Envronments which I got really good at, this went hand in hand with E-learning but we then got made redundant.
Set up a company with a fellow and went into Network management ( as with most business with friends it failed ) so I know have my own company but in reality its just me.
So for half the week I'm more or less a Managed service provider for 2 schools. So network support, hardware recommendations etc. The rest of the week I look after our little one and do web sites and computer repairs.
I'm in a slight dilemma as currently I earn enough to live but would like more work. I thought I'd cracked this last month when I got invited to another school to pitch them a new network, however they went with a larger company as they were scared with it been a large project. This has made me question myself and what I need to do. With the price of computers and newer OS there is less things to go wrong for the general publics computers to fix or if not sometimes its cheaper for them to purchase a new one.
This is hard for me to type but sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud when I do websites as the majority of them are Wordpress sites, which I purchase a theme for and then mod them to fit the clients wishes. So I don't feel like a designer or developer just a modder.
I feel like I don't know where to concentrate my efforts. I used to know some PHP and produced a few Database sites from scratch. Also done a big c# entity framework site. Just started looking at Swift and iOS development on lynda.
 
hargi said:
Just seen this pop up again so thought I would comment.
@Black Dynamite and Tilluss would it be ok if i Trust you some time?
My background was uni in the days when tables were still used for designs. Highlight was building a space invaders clone using Adobe Director. From there I went on to support, specifically Virtual Learning Envronments which I got really good at, this went hand in hand with E-learning but we then got made redundant.
Set up a company with a fellow and went into Network management ( as with most business with friends it failed ) so I know have my own company but in reality its just me.
So for half the week I'm more or less a Managed service provider for 2 schools. So network support, hardware recommendations etc. The rest of the week I look after our little one and do web sites and computer repairs.
I'm in a slight dilemma as currently I earn enough to live but would like more work. I thought I'd cracked this last month when I got invited to another school to pitch them a new network, however they went with a larger company as they were scared with it been a large project. This has made me question myself and what I need to do. With the price of computers and newer OS there is less things to go wrong for the general publics computers to fix or if not sometimes its cheaper for them to purchase a new one.
This is hard for me to type but sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud when I do websites as the majority of them are Wordpress sites, which I purchase a theme for and then mod them to fit the clients wishes. So I don't feel like a designer or developer just a modder.
I feel like I don't know where to concentrate my efforts. I used to know some PHP and produced a few Database sites from scratch. Also done a big c# entity framework site. Just started looking at Swift and iOS development on lynda.
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I will warn you that it's not the easiest time to be getting into iOS development at the moment, Swift is still very new and evolving all of the time, and there are many years worth of Objective-C codebases that are still being used and developed. You can still do most stuff in Swift, but there will be times where you need to look through Objective-C code, or even do something in Objective-C that you can't yet do in Swift (but this is very rare), so just bare that in mind.

If you are looking for good resources for iOS development then http://www.raywenderlich.com is a very good place to start, their training videos are well worth the $15 a month. And remember to check out the Swift language book by Apple, it's a great resource (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/swift-programming-language/id881256329?mt=11).

What I would suggest is that after you get some basic learning done (a grasp of the language) you should come up with a project, sketch it out on paper before you even touch the code, and then attempt to create it from start to finish. Don't start off with anything too big, just something simple like a table that lists your friends and then tapping on one of the cells pushes to another view to show their details, that kind of thing. Doing something simple like that will help you to understand the basic structure of an app, the concept of delegates and table cell reuse etc. Keep making small simple projects and making them harder and harder for yourself like showing images, animating a button when you tap it, making a network request to download some data (https://www.apple.com/itunes/affili...tion/itunes-store-web-service-search-api.html) and keep progressing from there.

Remember, it's not about knowing exactly how everything works off the bat, it's more about knowing that something exists so you can look it up when you need to use it at a later date. If you do that then you will naturally progress and things will click into place, rather than getting bogged down in the finer details right away.

Here are some other resources, they can be quite advanced but it's good to have the links for when you are ready in the future:

http://www.objc.io/issues/ - Very in depth look at very general topics, generally written by experts in the respective subjects.
http://nshipster.com - Small articles on very specific subjects.
 
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CMS will get so good that most of your work will be redundant. It's not a career path I'd pursue unless you do web design which cannot be automated to the same extent.

Plus you're competing with the world on elance e.t.c. It will not work long term. Make hay while the sun shines, so many aspects of IT are now a global and automated game.
 
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Vegeta said:
This maybe a naive question but what's the difference between web 'design' and web 'development'? Surely they go hand in hand?
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For me a web designer is a visual designer who specialises in web sites. They are mainly concerned with look and feel, and the user experience. Do some coding but its not their main gig.

Where as a Web developer is a programmer who specialises in web sites. They are mainly concerned with how everything works, in particular on the server side. Doesn't really care about the design. Spend all their day in code.

There is often overlap, especially in smaller companies. In larger companies they overlap less. Some places have no developers, and some places have no designers. Some designer can code a bit, and some developers think they can design.

Th3M8dH8tt3r said:
....I....To expand on the point about either design or dev, you need to look at the left and right side of the brain. One is stronger than the other typically. Left side is creative, right side is cognitive(I think). Either way, design suits one side better and dev the other so been good at both is rare.
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I originally came from design, worked in graphics for years, but a long time ago. I've been in development a long time, but have drifted into Biz Analyst work, and unfortunately support. Spend most of my days in SQL and a database. Really want to get back to something more creative.

The problem with doing both sides is that both sides have over the years become far more technical than in the past. Requiring a wider and deeper skillset. Its quite difficult to maintain both skillsets at the same time. I unfortunately have let myself drift away from both, and will now have to re-skill in current technologies.
 
I never found freelancing that rewarding. Its a lot of work, for not enough financial reward. Unless you are top of your field. It does give personal satisfaction though. but you can end up doing sales and debt collection more than actual working.

Working on larger projects in big companies is more financially rewarding, (well in my experience) but perhaps less satisfying. As you usually have to compromise on a lot of things.

Perhaps thats not the same for everyone else.
 
hargi said:
This is hard for me to type but sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud when I do websites as the majority of them are Wordpress sites, which I purchase a theme for and then mod them to fit the clients wishes. So I don't feel like a designer or developer just a modder
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I felt/feel the same. However there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Tailoring a theme etc takes knowledge too and ultimately the customer gets what they want, a bit faster and you get paid. The customer doesn't really care if you hand coded every last bit in brackets for them. What's easy to you (hence feeling a fraud peerhaps) is beyond A LOT of people who neither know, nor want to know how to do it themselves, hence paying you.

I've really enjoyed reading this thread. I'm 33 and starting off down a similar route now and it couldn't be more different form what I currently do. This is a bit of a backup/exit strategy for me.
 
End of the year update:-

I now have my own portfolio site, it needs updating because I've finished 2 web site designs and I'm putting the finishing touches to 2 mobile apps. I'd like to think it has helped in landing a few clients and I believe I come across more professional by having it.

Financially I've done pretty well this year (for me anyway) and managed clear my debts and have close to 5 figures in the bank.

I plan to do some travelling next year while working remotely. Hopefully in the next year or two I'll have a decent amount saved so I can get a place of my own. Right now I want to carry on learning more and more about design and generally improve in all area's including the business side of things such as sales and marketing myself.

I recently got back in contact with senior designer based in Canada and he said I should be charging $50-$60 an hour, I was quite amazed at those figure as I charge half that. If I could get 10 hours a week at $60/hour that would be pretty sweet. Anyway I think I'll be raising my rates a tad in the new year and see how it goes.

I still haven't learnt any coding, I did purchase a course about iOS development so I may dive into that at some point but as of now I really enjoy UI design and don't see the need to move in another direction just yet.

http://www.marcushanda.com
https://dribbble.com/mshanda
 
Just read through this, lovely! I laughed at the original design you did for the football page when you said you couldn't design, and compared to what you do now, just 11 months later, great job. I'm 29 and I'm hoping to do something similar, I posted a thread on here actually with my first attempt. Is there anything in particular you really found useful in your learning to kick start it off where everything suddenly just clicked? I'm more into design, over development.
 
Aedus said:
Just read through this, lovely! I laughed at the original design you did for the football page when you said you couldn't design, and compared to what you do now, just 11 months later, great job. I'm 29 and I'm hoping to do something similar, I posted a thread on here actually with my first attempt. Is there anything in particular you real really found useful in your learning to kick start it off where everything suddenly just clicked? I'm more into design, over development.
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The book called 'The Non-designers Design Book', I read an old version and got it for a couple of quid but there is a new one out if your willing to splash out. It's teaches you about CRAP which is contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity which will put you on the path of creating nice clean designs.

After that I just went mental on graphic design video tutorials from places like Lynda, Tutsplus and Treehouse. I only watched those for about 2 months because having 3 subscriptions is damn expensive. You can find tons of information via articles and youtube videos if you willing to spend the time searching.
 
mug2k said:
The book called 'The Non-designers Design Book', I read an old version and got it for a couple of quid but there is a new one out if your willing to splash out. It's teaches you about CRAP which is contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity which will put you on the path of creating nice clean designs.

After that I just went mental on graphic design video tutorials from places like Lynda, Tutsplus and Treehouse. I only watched those for about 2 months because having 3 subscriptions is damn expensive. You can find tons of information via articles and youtube videos if you willing to spend the time searching.
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Very useful, cheers mate. I'll probably buy that, also asked for another book for Christmas called "Don't make me think", both of those should help massively.
 
Aedus said:
Very useful, cheers mate. I'll probably buy that, also asked for another book for Christmas called "Don't make me think", both of those should help massively.
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That's really good book or so I've heard especially for the user experience side of things. With those 2 books you'll be off to a great start. Do you know what app your going to use to design? If you have a Mac I highly recommend Sketch if not illustrator is also good and better suited to UI design than Photoshop!
 
This is an awesome thread. Well done mate!

I don't normally do new years resolutions but I am going to for 2016. It's to clear all my debts and actually start saving!

I work full time but after all my outgoings I don't have much left. My goal is to use all the money I make from Web Developing\Designing (not sure which I want to get into at the moment) to pay off my debts and be debt free come 2017.

I currently know a little HTML5 and CSS3 but not enough to make a decent web page. I've got a Pluralsight subscription so will be mainly using that to learn coding. Once I know enough to make a basic website Im going to try and "design" it. That's when I'll know if I can design or not lol
 
Good stuff!

I recently started on the path of web-site development after doing a website for my Dad's business. He was quoted £5,000 for it and I said I could do it for 1/10th of that.

I managed to bag two clients, one for a shop and another for a small business website. Managed to rake in about £3.5k in 3 months or so. I am still at University however, but plan to hit it hard getting new customers and next term.

I'm a bit of a cheat mind, I just use weebly and mess around with the CSS until it changes the way I want it to. Slowly getting into the more advanced CSS stuff in terms of changing things around and getting stuff the way I want it. Main goal is to just get my portfolio up to a decent number and get my own website made!

A few of my sites:
www.malersykes.com
www.billyhunt.co.uk (still needs a little work)
www.TheLawlessSolution.com (mine... really need to get it started and finished!)

I do a fair bit of other IT consultancy work as well, is very nice not to have to work in a pub or a bar whilst at University, but don't think I have the skills to turn it into a full time profession. Hoping that if I can get better with the coding side this will all help to try and get a job on the IT industry. Currently studying Civil Engineering, but have lost love for it over the years, so want to go into IT.
 
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