Hello, I am interested in learning professional webdesign - but I do not have the knowledge yet. Programs that I own: Adobe Photoshop CS2 Adobe Illustrator CS2 Macromedia Flash 8 Macromedia Fireworks 8 Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Macromedia Contribute 3 Macromedia Coldfusion 7 Autodesk 3ds Max 9 The questions: What kind of coding and designing skills are required to earn $200-300+ per client in general? What coding language do you recommend to learn? Will be learning one. Do I need any additional program to be a professional webdeveloper/designer? Are all of these programs useful for webdeveloping/designing? ASP.NET vs. PHP? How much can you make a month as a professional freelance designer? How many clients do you usually have? Is it worth the effort to learn this and earn money this way I am looking forward to recieve answers from professional webdevelopers/designers. Concrete answers are heartly welcome, and appriciated.
You getting to far ahead of yourself; you have to learn the basics: Html/CSS. Learn those then come back and ask further questions.
Hello, In web design and development industry, there are 2 main areas: web design and web development. If you want to be a web designer, your tasks are mostly doing front-end graphics, layouts, and GUI of a website. You can start with Photoshop to create most of your graphics, the most popular graphic editing software that web designers use. You must at least know HTML to code static pages, and mightbe some JavaScripts/CSS. Dreamweaver is a great tool to build and code your site, it's a great editing software. So basically, if you master both of these softwares and html/javascripts/CSS, you can consider yourself a web designer. Even though, Flash is required on some projects, but it's optional depend on the project you're working on. If you know web programming like Cold Fusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NEt, JSP...is a big plus. These languages give you ability to build database driven websites, but it's consider as the job of Web Developer, so you don't need to learn if you want to be a Web Designer. However, if you do freelance works, you mostly need to know design and program, unless your projects are just static pages. Mostly, Web Designers don't know much programming, and Web Developers don't know much in web design. Of course, there are people can do both, but not many, and usually, they're good at 1 thing and not too good at the other. 1. You can easily earn $200-$300/client on a small web project like build a web site for them. People charge by hr rate from $25-$100+ per hr, depends on your skills and clients 2. If you want to get a job in corporate world, they mostly look for ASP.net, JSP programmers, salary is around $50K-$100K+/yr. PHP is very popular now a day, if you just want to do freelance, PHP is a good language to get started 3. Not really, web designers mostly use PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, web programmers just need a word editing software, Dreamweaver is a good tool as well 4. Yes 5. ASP.Net is for windows server, PHP is for Unix/Linux mostly 6. There's no answer for freelance 'cause it can be vary. Professional designers can make around $30K-$70K/yr 7. You need to ask yourself, do you really want to do it? Well..good luck and Happy New Year Cheers
You failed to see the illusive obvious; although it was my mistake not to state it, so me enlighten you now: I have HTML/CSS knowledge, else I would have asked for a beginner level of webdesign/coding. In addition to this, I have expert photoshop skills.
May I ask you what your definition of a professional webdesigner/developerl is? Could you provide me examples in the form of a portfolio of designs that are well payed. ($30K-$70K/yr) Please elaborate on what it takes to earn $50K-$100K+/y this way - do you intend on webdeveloping, webdesign, or both combined? Say that I prefer webdesign, how much do you earn as a semi-professional/professional a month, if you make a wild guess, or speak from experience?
If you go to monster.com, and do a quick search on web designer or web developer, you'll see their requirements and salaries
I would recommend starting up your own site to demo/enhance your abilities. Design is purely the look of a web-site which is what you seem to be going for. As such, you don't need to worry about programming outside of the HTML/CSS. I've only gotten a job once based on my knowledge of a language. One's ability to program is entirely seperate of what language they use. In your case, design, I think companies will be more interested in the look of whatever you do rather than the tools you used to make it. At my job I occasionally will make an icon or structure a page. For the most part it's just coding. If we need graphics we have someone else do it.
It really depends on how good you are. But in general, yes, developers make more money than designers in corporate world, and also more jobs available.
What do you recommend me to do? Currently I am learning Flash, and dreamweaver combined with -photoshop, -illustrator, -fireworks, -flash. Do you recommend me to learn a programming language aswell? in that case which is the one that you get best payed for, and which one is the easier (PHP, ASP.NET)? I am learning these programs buy following guides from www.totaltraining.com for design (and ASP.NET?) and www.lynda.com for programming (PHP?). Any comment on this? If I put down around 5 hours daily learning these programs, and a coding language, how long time do you think it will take to master it?
Hi, I think if you want to do it as your career, then you should go for what you like to do, not for the money. Web design and programming are related, knowing both won't hurt, but it will take you years to be really good. Why don't you start with HTML to see if you like building websites, 'cause web designers/developers should know at least HTML. Good luck to you
There's a huge difference between mastering a language and being a programmer. The same difference between knowing how to use a paintbrush and being an artist. At my current job which pays very decent I was hired on to use Ruby. A language I had barely heard of. Now I spend my time coding in Perl, which, prior to this job I had little experience with. I also work with JavaScript quite a bit. If you want to be a programmer you're going to have to learn more than a language. You have to a very good problem solver. How good are you at math? I'd recommend just sticking to what you're good at and to stop trying to make more money in a field you seem to have little chance at succeeding in. Any job you do just for the money you're going to hate.
Arrogance? ok time to enlighten; For a person to make $200-$300 on a project its not based on the designs skills AT ALL. I know of people who make that much and there designs are absolute shit. You can go to any local business and pump 400-500$ out of them no problem. It all depends on the person; the best web designers are able to make a great living off of designing websites, while some web developers wont make shit, and vise versa. To summarize, web design and development isnt about the money (its a + ) its about creating something out of nothing, you need to have a passion for it if your going to sit a computer 8+hours a day looking a 100's upon 1000's if not more lines code all day long. Sometimes looking for one line of code thats wrong. PS. I would like to see your "expert" photoshop skills
That's scary because it's true. If you want to make money all you have to do is find people that don't know any better and take their money.
I think he was being serious. If you want a job as a designer then you should have examples of your work readily available.
I was being sarcastic, I would like to see some of your work before I can consider you an expert with photoshop; anyone can claim to be one but unless you can back it up then you hold no merit with me ( did that make sense becuase im drunk?..)
Pardon me, but you're obviously mistaking me for someone who gives a damn about proving something that is irrelevant for you to know.