TIPS TO BECOME A WEB DESIGNER

A while ago someone sent me an e-mail asking me for some recommendations on how to become a web designer nowadays. Here is the answer I gave, hope I didn't miss anything.

Hello ******,
You are welcome. Glad to hear you want to get into the Web Design field.
Let me try answering your question:

Every Web Designer nowadays should have great knowledge of Graphic Design (ideally am University Degree or a formation in some other similar institution).

Second point should be technologies:
You should be skilled in some design software such as Photoshop, Illustrator or Figma. Video edition and the basics of programming knowlege (I recommend in Javascript) are also nice skills to include in your CV.

Third point is to learn about User Experience (UX):
The easiest way to get into it, is by reading a lot!

“Don’t make me Think” by Steve Krug is the one I would start to learn the basics of UX.
O’reilly publishers is another good source of knowledge, and they have tons of great books on the subject. Check the book here or here.

I started with this one some years ago and I can totally recommend it!

From here onwards it’s mostly up to you to find your passion and what drives you.

I, for example, combine Web Design with Frontend Development.
I can work on UX/UI and then take care of the Frontend logic.

I know other designers who are super passionate about UX, so their main skill comes from creating extremely effective and engaging user experiences. For this they usually create tons of paper mockups, run lots of tests on users, but hardly ever work on the final “polished” design, and they don’t work with HTML or CSS at all. They leave that for another designer with a passion for those things.

Some others prefer to work just on doing super-polished stuff (in Photoshop, Illustrator or others) and leave the other areas for others.

As you can see there are tons of options. It’s up to you to evaluate yourself and decide which of them suits you best.

Hope this helped somehow and that it answered your question. I leave you with some good links where you could get more info:

• www.lynda.com:
  Online courses for all sorts of design related things

• www.codecademy.com:
  Great for learning about web technologies.

• www.uxapprentice.com:
  Very good for getting started with UX.

• www.udemy.com:
  It's also great, and has tons of FREE courses.

• I insist on this book :D!

If you still have questions do not hesitate to ask me, I will try to give you an answer whenever I have some free time. I wish you the best of luck in the quest of becoming a Web Designer!

Cheers!

While I believe my initial response provided a good starting point, becoming a web designer involves much more than what I outlined. To excel in this field, you may want to consider specializing in user experience (UX) design, design systems, 3D, story telling or exploring other related areas. The possibilities are vast, and it's essential to keep learning and experimenting to stay ahead in this fast-paced (sometimes too fast-paced) industry.

Did I forget to mention any important point?
Let me know!