Unsolicited advice for new web designers
March 15th, 2007I have a co-worker with a 20 year-old son who has been learning web design at one of the local tech schools. While I’ve not met the son in person (or seen any of his work), his mom has told me a few things about him: he uses DreamWeaver, is a designer, is not a coder, is working in an unrelated industry, and wants to break into the web design industry. Below is a copy of some unsolicited advice I sent to my co-worker to pass along to her up-and-coming web designer son:
Web and graphic design is a very portfolio-based industry. I’d suggest putting together an online portfolio if he hasn’t already – then he can put a link to his portfolio in his resume. If he doesn’t already have an online portfolio, CarbonMade.com is a great free portfolio site that I recommend. One step further would be to get his own site/domain and put the portfolio together himself (but having a CarbonMade portfolio is good exposure).
I recommend posting a resume to Craigslist once or twice a week (make sure you can be found based on the title – most people only read the titles) Aside from Craigslist, there are a few job websites such as SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com that aggregate job listings from several other web sources – those are worth checking out. Also, the SitePoint.com forum has a “help wanted†section – I found a very good client there (SitePoint is a great site in general for graphic design, web design, and web programming). Another job/work resource to investigate is Elance.com (which I haven’t used, but hear good things about). A google search for “freelance web design jobs†(or something similar) will probably turn up several sites similar to Elance.
There is so much more I could have said like “learn (x)HTML and CSS”, “pratice, practice, practice”, or “don’t use tables for layout”, but I decided to keep it relatively short and sweet.
I just read this and thought good advice if you’re dealing with somebody whose main problem is being too lazy to reach for the jobs section of the local paper… But in terms of getting a career, becoming a professional, which are things that fresh-out-of-school designers really need and don’t get, there could be better things to say.
I’m as twenty year old web designer, and understand both parts played in that exchange. I’m lucky enough to be on salary with an information design company and as such I have job security and a constant stream of very interesting work, but very often acquaintances of mine are amazed - they do design or web design at uni, and want to know how to get into the industry.
Your advice on how to sell yourself is of course what everybody actually wants to know, and is probably the most immediately useful thing for a beginner. However I generally advise on how to make yourself credible and secure your status.
Web design as taught by institutions (at least in the UK) is criminally wasteful and superficial. An important quality in a young web designer is, even if you don’t have the know-how, at least an /interest/ in the workings of sites, an awareness of the importance of SEO, accessibility and usability. I would really stress that. I would also say, if you want to develop yourself to get ahead of the crowd, don’t twiddle your thumbs or sketch or look at expensive Flash applications… Delve into the basics of HTML, CSS and JS.
I think the success of your business is the perfect indication of the fact that owning Dreamweaver and enjoying drawing nice pictures are becoming less and less employable qualities. That’s not to say I’m admonishing the incapability of a lot of young ‘designers’ - I’m on their side. But there are only so many companies out there who want to give you credible amounts of money for a pretty new poster on their dot com.
I say learn how to put on display and explain the fact that you’re much more than that (because, as I’ve implied, people who just want to draw pictures for a living are 2p a dozen), and then go about becoming it. It’s incredibly rewarding but people get easily intimidated - they turn to you, but how many people starting up can afford to do that?
Subscribe to alistapart.com’s RSS feed. Join the evolt.org list and subscribe to the Web Standards Group and Eric meyer’s mailouts. Populate your brain with notions and opinions about what’s valuable in a website and why, learn a few tricks, find new ways of learning… Not only will you become a genuinely useful professional, you will learn how to tell prospective clients you’re the thing they need.