Starting the Web Designer Career – How to Stay Merely Updated

Nowadays, everyone is talking about applications and websites and it seems that this situation won’t change in the near future. And this is normal since the technology evolved and the online environment is part of our life.

In this context, the web design is starting to gain a pivotal role in the society and as a result many people are interested in becoming website creators!

We noticed this fact and thereby you should know that OmahPSD will be your most important resource to find out how to become a competitive web designer. We have previously talked about the mandatory human traits of a successful web designer. Today, we will reveal a hidden part of a designer activity.

This aspect is not as beautiful or as spectacular as launching a new website, but undoubtedly it is very important in order for you to become a good specialist. As you probably have guessed it’s about self-preparation and how to stay updated with the latest techniques and novelties.

Regardless of the university that the web designer has graduated, without self-preparation in just few years, he/she will be totally out dated. The single solution to remain competitive is to be aware of the fact that self – preparation is a must!

Fortunately, the Internet provides the best modalities of becoming updated and here we have established a list of ways in which you could keep in touch with the amazing rate of growing of the Internet! It’s possible that we have missed some techniques. Therefore, you may complete the post with your own ideas and methods.

Accepting that your studies aren’t enough

Yep, accepting that your studies aren’t enough is not a method to improve your skills. Despite this, I preferred to add it here because this is mandatory for you to learn something new. It’s a matter of pride to accept that the knowledge you gathered in school isn’t enough for you to be catalogued as a “good web designer”.

The conclusion is simple: the studies were necessary to learn the basic rules, but the teachers couldn’t forecast what the www future will look like.

#1. Online web design courses

If you graduated ten years ago, you probably have learnt to make websites by using tables; but things have changed and this is no longer a reliable solution.

Online web design courses represent a very good method to find out about the latest ideas and techniques that concern the complicated art of making websites. These courses may be divided in two big categories:

1. Available for worldwide designers

The best examples are Team Tree House and Code Academy – everyone may follow their courses. I really recommend these two websites because the courses are well structured and easy to understand.

2. Locally available

This solution could be presented as follows: there are teams of web designers and teachers that teach web design to students based in a single country or a region.

Online or via “classical” methods, these teams take care of the designers-to-be and step by step the basic rules of beautiful design are learnt.

I can’t offer you examples given the fact that these are particular for each country, but if you will search something like this on Google, you will certainly find a couple of trusty solutions.

#2. Quality web design blogs

Another useful and common solution is the daily consult of the top web design blogs. In their early times these weren’t very reliable sources of information, but nowadays some of them provide only quality tips and the best practices.

We selected only seven blogs that are daily checked by us- the team behind OmahPSD, but you may customise your own list of bookmarked sources of information.

#3. Practice by following the talented ones-tutorials

If you want to be a good web designer you will have to work hard. Practice is mandatory and the fact that you know by heart the rules of beautiful design is useless if you can’t apply them into the layouts you have created.

A very good solution to practice and learn new techniques is to follow tutorials – the more, the better. The web design blogosphere is full of amazing and well explained tutorials so I am sure that every taste will be satisfied. The offer is very large: from beginners to top experts, from retouch methods to creating a retina ready layout.

#4. The books will never die

Even if we live in the digital era, the “old” books will never die. In conclusion, reading a book about web design is highly recommended. Compared to a blog post, a book presents more aspects about the subject and usually the content is more qualitative.

The ones that love too much the digital format may read e-books. The demand for e-books exploded in the last two years and it means that people appreciate them. Some e-books are real best-sellers and definitely, they can’t be missing from your digital library!

#5. Dynamic portfolio

This is a very delicate subject. Many web designers, especially the beginners, create personal websites where some past works are exhibited. The website is called portfolio and in this manner the designer expects to be contacted by people who will hire them to do a specific job- usually to create a website.

It’s a childish mentality to really believe that people will contact you… The Internet offers so many opportunities, which means that a potential client is already “assaulted” by other designers. Nowadays, the single viable solution is to search for clients- to let them know that you exist and your works are awesome.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the new web designer should have a portfolio, but also his works must be uploaded on various galleries – Behance, DeviantArt, Dribbble, etc.

It’s a very smart idea to use these networks because there the comments and the feedback of other web designers are allowed and welcomed. More or less, each uploaded design is studied and rated and this competition pushes every designer to create better pieces of work. There is no better learning modality than competing with the best designers!

In the end, I hope that this post would be useful for many designers and these modalities of self-preparation will be taken into account and put in practice. Altogether, don’t forget that practice is mandatory and every new technique that you have acquired must be reflected in the websites you have created!

– Written by Daniel –