How-To Pursue a Career in Web Design?
Pursuing a successful career in Web Design requires more than just having the right equipment or a tasteful eye for design. Website designers often lose perspective and get hung up on their tangible skills, like Photoshop skills or mastering of various script languages. Here you'll learn some very important things that any aspiring designer should keep in mind when building your professional web development portfolio.
Gaining a Clear Perspective Besides designing an eye-catching design and balancing a huge amount of information, the challenge the majority of web designers face involves effectively managing their professional careers. Building websites that look good doesn't stop there; you'll also have to manage all of the things that combine to form a successful business, from planning and execution to marketing and communication. A designer has to be astute as well as professional with each step taken. These are things that cannot be obtained quickly by reading books or sitting in a classroom; Rather, many of these are skills that take time and experience to perfect and when properly applied over time, will help you attain success in your career. Efficient Communication Skills Effective communication is a skill that can either make or break you in any field and an absolute must in web development where communicating with a client, art director, or developer can dictate the success of a project. Presenting yourself and selling your work, you'll need to be assertive and clear in your communication with the client. You need to be able to speak intelligently about your design choices. You'll need to project confidence when explaining why you chose them and how your design choices are the right fit for their business. Most disputes can be resolved easily if your efficient at communicating. Learning to communicate and communicate well will help determine your success. Selling Yourself The career of a Designer is a very competitive one. In order to make yourself stand out from the competition, you need to let people know about yourself and your skills. There are numerous ways you can do this. Word of mouth marketing, social media marketing and even business card marketing can be effective. However, if you sit back in and wait for clients to come to you, than your doomed from the start. You'll need persistence and a 'never give up' attitude in order to make it in a career as a web designer. Planning Your Design It's vitally important to plan and research well before going into the designing process. Many Web Designers skip or rush this process however; pre-design planning can save you time, money and resources. Pre-planning includes; Researching about the client's company, asking the client what he/she wants and expects from the web, and examining what your client's competitors are doing and the related industry trends. Sure, many designers approach projects waiting for inspiration to take over, however the fact is that with planning. inspiration can form much more quickly. Have Your Work Evaluated and Get Feedback Professional designers should have the ability to place themselves in the shoes of their target audience. Being able to point out mistakes in your own work and handle criticism as
well as positive feedback are traits that success-oriented designers possess. Having other people check your work for mistakes will help greatly. Focus on Becoming a Web Designer not a Graphic Designer It seems to be a general misconception that graphic designers and web designers are relatively the same field which might be true in theory however, the majority of graphic designers never bridge the gap between print-based projects and web-based projects. Target audience and objectives of websites are entirely different compared to graphic design work. Keep Updated with New Technology If you don't want to see your competitors take away your business by appearing to be more with what's new, keep an eye out for emerging trends. Stay in tune with the latest in technology as the industry changes. Make sure you stay true to your own signature style and don't get caught up too much in trends but be aware of them as some may turn out to be short-lived fads. Don't Forget Your Soft Skills Soft Skills are some of the most important skills to master. It's important to have a full grasp on subjects such as, the modern HTML coding, high quality CSS for best cross browser compatibility, proper search engine optimization (SEO) practices, JavaScript UI techniques, and to build a dynamic site in that scales with the addition of more pages or content over time. Understanding these multiple skill-sets will assist in landing more work and make you more desirable to potential clients. Gaining Experience Experience helps lend credibility to your overall qualifications and skills. A designer's success depends greatly on your amount of experience in the field and employers and potential clients are interested in knowing how much previous experience you have, which companies have you worked with, and what projects you have worked on relative to their project. Having a broad experience in the field will help you to quickly identify design solutions to be presented in your initial consultation. Point blank, the more experience you get under your belt, the better designer you'll be. Be Organized Being organized is important in the case of web designing, your work can get very messy at times, and this may lead to many issues. Start with organizing your computer by classifying texts, pictures, graphics, videos and sound files in separate folders and label them appropriately. This will help designers keep themselves organized, utilize their time efficiently and finish the job easier. Business Sense Web Designers, whether freelance or salaried employees, should have a business mind when approaching any project as successful designer don't only design websites for their
clients, they create business solutions for them as well. Web Designers need to understand salesmanship, making value assessments, and balancing costs to have an edge on competitor. However, if managing the business side of design becomes too difficult to do, it maybe worth looking into working with a larger studio that will take on the major those responsibilities for you. Portfolio Maintaining a current portfolio is an absolute must or any designer's success. Your portfolio is the best way to showcase your abilities and aesthetics, but more importantly, it shows potential clients that you are current, relevant, and active in the design world. A portfolio gives solid evidence to show what your capable of. You'll want a portfolio that covers every aspect of designing including layouts, content management, composition, typography, colors, techniques, and design rationales. Displaying the full scope of your work to potential clients will gain more clients, and justify the amount money you charge to your clients. Kayol Hope has a deserve background and working knowledge specializing in the areas of IT Consulting, Programming, and Web Development. His blog [http://kayolhope.me] and online community of social networking was established to house and showcase some of the best information technology & programming tutorials and articles around. His published tutorials not only produce great results and interfaces, but explain the techniques behind them in a friendly, approachable manner. We hope our subscribers will learn a few tricks, techniques, and tips that they might not have seen before and help them maximize their creative potential!
www.ksofttechnologies.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kayol_R_Hope/1416052