What do you need to become a Web Designer?

RyuGaiden82

I have a BA degree in Public Relations. I have decided that I want to become a Web Designer so I can work at a Web Design company.  I have natural art skills and some photoshop experience.

For those of you on this board who know about Web Design, what will it take to get a job in Web Design?  Do I need to get certified? and What kind of classes should I take?  What kind of credentials would I need to land a full time job?  

 

MrClutch

You dont need any certification.



It depends on what you want to do, or if you want to do it all. I've been in the industry for about 10 years or so. From my experience, you should pick something, and get really good at it.



If you want to be a designer, learn photoshop and illustrator. Pick up a little flash skills too.



If you want to be on the development side, learn HTML, Javascript, CSS, and Flash + Actionscript. Those are the basics, once you get a handle on those you can start learning .NET, JQuery, SQL, and such.



What I see a lot of, is people spreading themselves too thin. I see a lot of mediocre designers who possess some HTML/XML/JS skills, but not enough to be dangerous. That just puts you in the "Jack of all trades, master of none" category where you'll get stuck with an entry level position.



If you're really good at either one, you shouldnt have a problem finding some work. Good luck dude!

NESHomebrew

Basically you need to get yourself a really good portfolio. When it comes to web design, school means nothing, and results are everything.

Dain

I actually started off on the design side of things, but happened to be a hobbyist programmer, so I ended up on the development side of things.

In today's market, the only tool that is an absolute must-know for designers is Adobe Photoshop and everything else is somewhat secondary IMO. You don't have to be a master (yet), but you'll need to know how to use it. Flash will probably be required for most design positions these days as well, even if you have only a basic understanding to build from. And with Flash comes ActionScript, very similar to ECMAScript/JavaScript.

Where I disagree with MrClutch slightly is that I believe most designers are also pretty fluent in HTML/CSS, or at least fluent in an IDE (like Adobe DreamWeaver) to create it for them. You need to be able to manipulate HTML and CSS either using an editor or by hand, or preferably both. Think of HTML/CSS as the linkage between design and development. As Ron said, from there, if you choose, you can learn relational database design, jQuery (we use this on NA) and your middleware of choice, such as ColdFusion/.NET/JSP/Perl/Ruby/etc.

Dain

If I could offer up one more thought on this topic: don't get too tied up in the language game. What I mean is, design is design, development is development, regardless of the language used. Languages change more frequently than concepts, so focus on learning concepts and you'll always have a job. I've learned more languages in the last 15 years that have failed than have succeeded, but the concepts are what remain. Here are a few for memory lane: HTA, HTC, VRML, VBScript, JScript, etc... (some are still used in various capacities, but these were all browser languages that pretty much died).