How did everyone become a professional web designer? I have created a few business websites on my own and really enjoy it, and I am looking at making a career out of it. I have spent the past couple of months studying ASP.NET and plan on getting my MCAD in the next 12-18 months. Everything I have looked at online, for any type of IT position requires 3-5 years experience, which I have just not "professional" experience. I also just received my Associates Degree it IT from the University of Phoenix. I know it is not the greatest route, but being 29 years old with a family and responsibilities it was not feasible to go to a traditional university full time and try to work full time as well.
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Breaking into the market
- Thread starter m_cochran
- Start date
well, I kind of 'stumbled" into it. I started out as a self-taught network admin that was lucky enough to land a job with a small Dotcom start-up back in the day. I wasn't that great at being a network admin initially, I just knew the basics, but I caught on very quickly.
My boss was so impressed that he allowed me to pursue some other stuff in my free time. One of those pursuits was web development. I soon realized that I really liked it, and my boss handed me the company Intranet and said to just run with it. I spent months learning all about web development in my spare time and soon produced a pretty decent Intranet site for the company. That experience gave me tons of resume material, and made it really easy for me to get a job offer at an even bigger company doing web development full-time (my boss recommended me to them, BTW). The rest is history, I've been doing this for 8 years now and there's ALWAYS new stuff to learn and new challenges to face.
So my recommendation is to apply for those 3-5 year positions anyway. If you have an impressive enough resume, lots of companies will overlook that. You'd be surprised how many people with lots more years in the business don't know shit about modern web development techniques. Any decent company dedicated to quality work will take many other things into considerations, not just how long you've been doing it.
My boss was so impressed that he allowed me to pursue some other stuff in my free time. One of those pursuits was web development. I soon realized that I really liked it, and my boss handed me the company Intranet and said to just run with it. I spent months learning all about web development in my spare time and soon produced a pretty decent Intranet site for the company. That experience gave me tons of resume material, and made it really easy for me to get a job offer at an even bigger company doing web development full-time (my boss recommended me to them, BTW). The rest is history, I've been doing this for 8 years now and there's ALWAYS new stuff to learn and new challenges to face.
So my recommendation is to apply for those 3-5 year positions anyway. If you have an impressive enough resume, lots of companies will overlook that. You'd be surprised how many people with lots more years in the business don't know shit about modern web development techniques. Any decent company dedicated to quality work will take many other things into considerations, not just how long you've been doing it.
That pretty much describes my situation as well. My parents started each of their own businesses, and my mom wanted a website. She asked me to make her one, so I started teaching myself by designing hers. The first one I made was horrible, but I kept at it learning more and more and now her site is completely W3C HTML 4.01 compliant. After doing hers, I did one for my step-dads company, and one for the mortgage company I previously worked at for their reverse mortgage department. I have designed a few others as well, and enjoy the challenge and the creativity portion of it. I guess the best thing I can do, is just keep designing different sites, even if they are not complete sites but just shells/templates to be used in order to get more and more of my work out there.
I started making websites as soon as I got online... and that was 15 years ago when I was 12 years old. I was always the type to take apart RC cars and stuff, so the inner workings of HTML fascinated me.
I went pro/fulltime at 17, learned a language that ended up faltering. A big name web firm still used it, and I was one of the few people in the area who knew it. They hired me and I got to work on some big name projects (tampa bay bucs, tampa bay lightning, dupont registry, etc). That resume builder enabled me to launch further into my career. I worked for disney internet group for 2.5 years, and now I relocated to cali to work for Oakley (yes, the sunglass company. no, I can't get you free shades).
That's pretty much how I got where I'm at.
I went pro/fulltime at 17, learned a language that ended up faltering. A big name web firm still used it, and I was one of the few people in the area who knew it. They hired me and I got to work on some big name projects (tampa bay bucs, tampa bay lightning, dupont registry, etc). That resume builder enabled me to launch further into my career. I worked for disney internet group for 2.5 years, and now I relocated to cali to work for Oakley (yes, the sunglass company. no, I can't get you free shades).
That's pretty much how I got where I'm at.
Was there a particular aspect of web dev that you were interested in, ie: UI and graphics versus data and communication, or general web design?
Pretty much all of it interests me, all though I am not very artistic so the graphic part is a little less interesting to me but still fun to try imagine and create something.
Pretty much all of it interests me, all though I am not very artistic so the graphic part is a little less interesting to me but still fun to try imagine and create something.
"Good designers copy, great designers steal"... Assuming that you already know the basics, look at websites that you find interesting and try to make something similar. Dig into the code to see how things are put together, what techniques they used, and what design approaches they took. That's the best way to gain lots of knowledge in a short time IMO.
"Good designers copy, great designers steal"... Assuming that you already know the basics, look at websites that you find interesting and try to make something similar. Dig into the code to see how things are put together, what techniques they used, and what design approaches they took. That's the best way to gain lots of knowledge in a short time IMO.
That is how I began learning, and how I still learn how to do a lot of things that I don't know how to do.
"Good designers copy, great designers steal"... Assuming that you already know the basics, look at websites that you find interesting and try to make something similar.
This is why you can't escape rounded corners.
This is why you can't escape rounded corners.
.. and striped backgrounds...and gradients. In spite of all that, trends in web design come and go on a pretty regular basis. I think striped backgrounds have just about run its course, though I'm afraid rounded corners are going to be with us for a long time.