A little background of where I am at. I am 32yrs old with a compliance background in the financial industry and about a yr ago I was assigned to a project to work with our web design team to help reinvent our internal company compliance website. At that time I had zero knowledge of html & css. I started to pay attention to our web designers while we were redesigning our website and how they were coding and after awhile got an average understanding of html & css. Since our internal compliance website doesn’t get updated that often, I decided to take the job of coding and doing the updating myself which I have been doing for the past few months. I don’t know javascript or jquery but am slowly trying to learn if we add something like a slider, gallery, etc. If I ever have a question I reach out to web design for assistance and they are always glad to help me out. I really want to learn more about web design and get a more advanced understanding with html & html5, css & css3, javascript, etc and applications like photoshop, flash… This is what interest me the most and would love to find a job solely dedicated to this. I feel like I need more training am afraid that my current position just doesn’t give me the training that I want. I am only probably spending 1/10 of my time updating the site, which is annoying because this is the area that I really like. I would love to work for a large company doing this on a full time basis but feel that I wouldn’t get an opportunities with my current skill level. I would even mind working my way up again to prove that I am dedicated professional just don’t know what opportunities to look for where this would work for web design. I thought I would reach out to all of you for advice and if there is a certain strategy I should follow. Oh yeah, to top it off I have a 8month old who is starting to crawl so that can make learning at nights hard at times. But I am truly dedicated to this because this is really what I want to do just need to figure out a good game plan of what to tackle at different stages. Thank you so much, P.S. I would be glad to help people out with their projects to help get me more training (please pm me). I dont want any money, want to learn first with on the job usage.
If you want to have a decent level of success you should first test your skills . Try to draw a copy of the Mona Lisa by hand and color it . Does it look good . Then you have what it takes to design . Then try solving a trigonometry problem off the top of your head with just minimum writing . Was it hard ? If the answer is yes then stay off programming . Unless you want to join the masses of mediocrity then be sure you have what it takes to succeed . Otherwise you're just putting yourself trough pointless hardship .
with regards to what apocalypse said to you, that's totally retarded... Great artists aren't born with their skills its a carefully honed craft and in respect to his trigonometry example I know plenty of successful and talented programmers who aren't able to do long division without a calculator that doesn't make you more or less suited to programming. You can learn any of the things you listed and more the only thing limiting your ability is your will to succeed. If it truly interests you and you are honestly committed to a career change in this direction I can offer some words of wisdom that may help. ' Learning this is no different than anything else you've ever learned it will be easy or hard based off factors you can't really control, innate aptitudes and so forth. It is undoubtedly time consuming and often confusing especially when it comes to the technical aspects. In terms of design as well because often times individuals do actually have good design sense but lack the technical skills to make their visions possible so end up with something, well pretty crappy. The best advice I can give you is if you are serious to just start doing it as much as possible. You will suck at first be prepared for that and just understand that like anything else practice makes perfect and the more you put into it the more you will get out of it. There are a multitude of learning tools available via the internet you don't need me to list them for you, google works wonders. I can suggest you search around and try multiple systems until you find one that youre comfortable with. A good place to start is often taking a look at sites that you find visually appealing and taking them apart and trying to reconstruct them. You'll get a good understanding of how a site is put together this way. Modifying templates may be a good starter spot too as it allows you to get a feel for what pieces and parts will do and how you can reproduce desired effects and layouts for yourself later. Most of what I've said you'll likely find in some training guides online elsewhere so I'll stop writing this tl;dr wall of text and just say that it's a lot of work but if youre serious about what you've said it will be a very rewarding process for you. Best of luck!
You seem smart as a rock . To create an artists it takes at least 5 years , do you think the OP can spend the next 5 years perfecting himself to be another mediocre artist ? Or do you think there aren't enough people prostituting themselves for 3 USD per logo / 20 USD per website ? The world doesn't need anymore mediocrity and artistic spam . If you want to be a good graphic designer you'll need more then Photoshop mastery , you simply must have that extra edge that will make you stand out of the masses . Also there is a lot more to programing then just writing the script/code . Mathematics is the principle behind CPU operation , knowing the basis means you'll be able to find solutions where others hit the wall . Also by reconstructing website he'll just end up in the masses of monkeys , reverse engineering is just reverse engineering , it does not grantee creativity and ingenuity , constructing and reconstructing a car doesn't make you a automobile engineer , it will make you a grease monkey in the best of cases . The way to learn is to look at thing that inspire you , envision your future creation and then forge it . Computers are just the tools .
smart as a rock? clever analogy as always it seems... a few counter points to your oh so precocious response 1. To create an artists it takes at least 5 years , do you think the OP can spend the next 5 years perfecting himself to be another mediocre artist ? I didn't realize there was an exact time line on the time it takes to "create an artist"? Where do you draw your data for this from? Further more how can you state that so simply I can tell you I was creating gainful works within the first year of design and have continued to improve over the last 9 years and will continue to improve until I stop. Furthermore, its haughtily presumptuous of you to predetermine the OP's worth as an artist or anything else, you aren't him don't presume to know his value, potential or dedication. 2. Or do you think there aren't enough people prostituting themselves for 3 USD per logo / 20 USD per website ? Who would work for these rates? My base rate for a website is $3,500, the average project ends up somewhere in 8-10k range. I don't typically JUST do logos, but my branding packages start at around $1,200. When I started I was charging roughly $500 per site and a couple hundred dollars for branding materials. 3. If you want to be a good graphic designer you'll need more then Photoshop mastery , you simply must have that extra edge that will make you stand out of the masses . Undoubtedly solid technical skills a good designer do not make, people need to have good taste and good sensibility and a slew of other skills that can be acquired and are not necessarily something that all people innately have. I get your point, most people who think they can design aren't very good and it's true that the people setting trends are a small portion of the mass but I can tell you that I have never set a design trend for the web and I probably never will but I still make a very comfortable living doing something I enjoy and am good at. Does this make me a bad designer for only following popular trends and not setting them? I don't think so. The cutting edge is typically not started in the commercial front anyways. It usually starts in the creative sector and makes it's way into corporate where the vast majority of the work lies anyhow. 4. Also there is a lot more to programing then just writing the script/code . Mathematics is the principle behind CPU operation , knowing the basis means you'll be able to find solutions where others hit the wall . Of course there is, but once again the guy didn't say he was looking to make waves and trends or learn the finer points of computer science and processor design. We're talking about programming for the web, it's not exactly rocket science. PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby, SQL - The basic tools needed for most standard web development are fairy basic in terms of syntax and usage. The documentation and resources available to learn them are vast and comprehensive. It's not like this stuff is really difficult when you get right down to it. Most people COULD do it, it's just a matter of learning it and wanting to. You're over (or possibly under?) thinking things and making assumptions about his ambitions that are undue again. 5. Also by reconstructing website he'll just end up in the masses of monkeys , reverse engineering is just reverse engineering , it does not grantee creativity and ingenuity , constructing and reconstructing a car doesn't make you a automobile engineer , it will make you a grease monkey in the best of cases . The way to learn is to look at thing that inspire you , envision your future creation and then forge it . Computers are just the tools . The best way to learn how something works is to take it apart and look at the pieces, this isn't an original thought but a tried and true method. Reverse engineering works and it gives valid insight into syntax and usage that often times hello world examples just can't portray. Doing exercises in a book is no different except you are only seeing portions of an overall picture. Your little philosophical rant at the end of that whole thing is just too silly to warrant a real response so I'll just say lulz. Are you actually an accomplished working designer or developer? It would surprise me greatly if you were and could provide evidence to that fact.
I'm not sure if I have a good answer to this. But it does take some time to be good at it. I started with this when I was a kid, about 11 years ago. So for me it really started as a hobby, and years later I got good enough with it to make money with it. Anyways, there are plenty of resources on the web: A list apart, Smashing Magazine, diveintohtml5.org (which is offline, but google: github diveintomark) also check out the o'Reilly books (CSS > CSS the missing manual)
Oh IDK , maybe because that's the bare minimum time that it would take for someone to get a designers degree from a respectable institution (not from a diploma factory) . Of course if you factor in the fact that most students from design where also art students in high school then you get 9 years but that's just me pulling out numbers . You can ignore it and carry on , after all I do admit that I could train a Photoshop monkey in one week , if the monkey would be willing . Those rates are pulled out of what anus ? A world class designer like Chip Foose asks for 160 USD per hour , a excellent designer like Brad Colbow asks for 80 USD per hours ; at best you could ask for 40 USD per hour . So keep dreaming . Also since you want to meet the ladies : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104 - read and weep . Setting major trends in design (overall) is difficult , setting new standards in webdesing (print) isn't an unmovable challenge , in fact if you are bent on innovating and deliver the best possible product you will unwittingly set a some new standards and inspire others . Yes it's definitely not rocket science , this is why the best websites on the web are 100% secure and don't require regular upgrades and security fixes . It's definetly not rocket science , this is why anyone can get a job at Microsoft , why anyone can get a job at Cisco and why a lot of high school dropouts are working as programmers for Facebook or Google . Right ? The best way to learn how something works is to take it apart and look at the pieces, this isn't an original thought but a tried and true method. Reverse engineering works and it gives valid insight into syntax and usage that often times hello world examples just can't portray. Doing exercises in a book is no different except you are only seeing portions of an overall picture. Your little philosophical rant at the end of that whole thing is just too silly to warrant a real response so I'll just say lulz. [/QUOTE] As I've said before reverse engineering is awesome to train a mechanic but if you need to add creativity and ingenuity then reverse engineering is far to limited . If what you're saying it's true then architects would start learning by demolishing buildings . ROFLMAO - and you are ? Dude your own website is off line and you're trying to sell snake oil on twitter , you recommend the 960 grid system (in case you didn't found out CSS allows you to use "%" ; amazing isn't it ?) . When it comes to accomplishments you still have a long way to go . Next time when you decide to pull arguments out of your ego please do yourself a favor and slap several hornet nests . Maybe that will give you some wisdom .