Do any of you have suggestions how I should spend time if I want to be a successful web designer?

I have chosen to be a web designer, because I was always artistic growing up, and I believe that web design, and anything web related, is where the money will be in the foreseeable future. In addition to this, I am more interested at this point in my life in working for a company, a 9 - 5 if you will, and something that once I have become proficient at, I can support a family with.

To help you understand the predicament as I see it, I envy my brother because he is going in to be an electrical engineer. Although I know the workload is very intense, he has a clear cut path to success. Take x many courses, get good grades, get your degree, and start applying. Boom. Good paying job doing work you'll probably enjoy more than flipping burgers.


With web design I am having a very difficult time figuring out how to spend my time. I am willing to get an associates if that would help, but I get alot of advice from folks in this industry that the best path is being self taught. To me this is daunting and I don't know how to spend my time.

I am older now, at age 25. I understand there are no shortcuts to this industry, but I do believe there are ways of being more effective in your approach to learning and growing as a designer, so I am turning to you folks to learn from you what works and what does not work, and the things you did that felt like time well spent as you worked towards being a hirable professional.
Do I learn html, css, javascript etc... then start building websites? Do I start building websites, and pick up the knowledge along the way using google?

Should I be building certain kinds of websites for my portfolio, to show off my understanding of these languages? What kinds specifically would you recommend?

Is it fair to say that you need to be fluent, or do most designers just know the basics, and pick up what they need as a situation arises?


I have many more questions, but I don't want to overwhelm. I just would like to get some advice on how I can proceed confidently, because scheduling time in my day to work on this is important to me, and if I can be very focused as to what I am spending my time on, and why, then the happier I will be. Thanks designers, I am glad to be a part of this .

 

As a designer you should have in DeviantArt community

It is good for if you acquire all related information's with in your industry but concentrating on a specific thing which you enjoy in doing will make you master in that particular thing.

 

Okay. First of, you don't want to be a webdesigner - you want to be a webdeveloper. Webdesigners usually don't know jack shit about how to make a proper website, and they will cobble together something that will not hold up to scrutiny (when looking at the code). Stay away from things like Bootstrap and jQuery/MooTools/similiar js-libraries in the beginning, till you have a working knowledge of how HTML, CSS and pure javascript works.
Then, what you need to do, is get to grips with why we use HTML, why we use CSS, and why we use Javascript. Short version: HTML is for structure. It has nothing to do with how things look. Many people misunderstand this, and choose an HTML element based on how it looks in most browsers. (H3 is smaller than a H2, in most browsers, hence we're gonna choose an H3, since we want a smaller heading). This approach is wrong. HTML is structured in a particular way, and how it looks before styling has nothing to do with how it looks after you style it with CSS. So, get to grips with how you code HTML the right way. When you have that down, you go on to CSS, and styling the HTML you've made - and, make sure that the HTML you use is complimenting the content of the site - always start with the content, then add HTML to that content. CSS is added to style particular elements in a particular way. You want an upper-case H2, in the color purple, with a shadow on it? Then you do that with CSS.
Javascript is something you build onto the site after you get it working without javascript. Javascript is meant to enchance the functionality of the site, not create functionality, or be the only way a certain form is being processed, or effects shown. If you need javascript to use the page, you've done something wrong.

However, these are all just eyecandy and how the site will look to a user. To actually arrive at that finished page, you usually need to know some sort of server-side language - PHP is the simplest to learn, and most used in web-development. There are others, of course, like Python and Perl (to some extent), but PHP is probably the best bet, at least in the beginning. However, depending on where you're situated, and what you want to work with, Microsoft's .NET and/or .asp-pages might be smarter to learn - the jobs usually pay better than PHP-jobs, at least where I'm from.

 

Designer?... Developer?... In my company we employ 40 developers who all make over $100k a year plus bonuses and profit-sharing. I also have 1 designer making substantially less and occasional contract designers that clients want to use. 90% of the time we don't need designers, and the biggest contribution they make when we do use them is it to add about 15% to cost, because nothing gets delivered on time.

If you want to do graphics design, buy a box of crayons and a big box of paper and stay away from computers. The relationship to major site development and "web designers" is about the same as the role of a guy painting lines on the road in traffic engineering and planning.

If what you actually want is to learn web development, then spend 5 or 6 hours a day for two weeks visiting a wide range of content rich sites... topics don't matter; just content quality. Look at how that content is able to stand on its own. Then notice that the markup (HTML) supports and enhances that content without ever getting the way. Then notice that the styling is almost invisible, because it seamlessly enhnces and supports without ever asserting the importance of an effect. Finally notice that most of the quality content does not need scripting

When you learn how to do content like that; you can call yourself a frontend developer, and start learning the other half of the job by learning how to generate that conent, store that content efficiently, protect that content from, hackers and maintain that content. At that point you are worth top dollar as a full stack developer, and you can decide if you want to step out on the edge and learn the skills to do back office integration where where there is no ceiling on income if you are a star.

 

DeviantArt is the world's largest online social community for artists and art enthusiasts, allowing people to connect through the creation and sharing of art. I suggest you get exposure there.

 

Eh, deviantart is more for artists and that site feels really outdated and old.

 

Yeah well it was most like put together by designers, so you can't expect it to be much more than a bad attempt at doing print media on web pages. Or maybe it is intended to be some kind of joke about how badly designers screw up web sites.