Jesse meets Bernard to find out what a day in the life of a Web Designer is all about.
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What does it take to become a Web Designer?
Web designers/developers design, create, produce and maintain websites using relevant software packages. They are required to meet clients and other people working on particular projects, such as designers and systems specialists.
Bernard explains what a web designer does, why he’s passionate about it and reveals the high demand in the industry for web designers.
Transcript
We use the web more than ever these days, whether we’re playing games, downloading apps or buying clothes. But somewhere, someone sat down and actually created that website. That’s like Facebook, Amazon, even apps like Instagram and Snapchat all started with one person sitting at a computer.
What does a typical day look like?
Typically I run catch ups with clients, workout what the upcoming requirements they want their website and the first point is doing a wireframe of how everything fits together so that I know exactly what elements they want on their website. From there running Photoshop and do the actual design and then we go through the motions of making sure it’s all been approved back and forth until they like it and from there we build the website.
And so why did you want to be a web designer?
I started like 15 years ago, I used to design websites for gaming companies, that’s my passion & we wanted a place where all my mates can all come in and discuss about how we kicked each other’s asses in games, that’s how it started.
You got into it when you were 15 but if you’re a bit older can you still get into the industry?
Absolutely, this industry you don’t have an expiry date. One of our colleagues is 50 plus. He’s the UX designer, user interface designer and user experience. That’s the best part. With that age group you have better attention to detail, you’ve got the experience, it’s ticking all the boxes right now, so I would say any age group it’s not a problem.
Is there much work out there for a web designer at the moment?
Every business needs a website it’s the main medium to get your message across to people these days. Definitely a lot of careers and opportunities out there for websites. These days we don’t just do the website, we make sure it looks great for mobiles, with tablets it becomes more interactive you do more cool stuff so it was exciting.
What’s the hardest part of the job?
Probably the hardest part is like pleasing all clients. Some clients might want some designs a specific way even though they hired me to design it for them.
What’s the most rewarding part of the job, what brings you to work every day?
The fact that like every client or every new design is different. You get different industries, you wouldn’t get the same boring big industry like a paint websites for example, you’re gonna get an entertainment website based, or a lifestyle website based website you get a celebrity now and then as well it’s fun.
What piece of advice would you give someone wanting to move into your field?
I think the best way to move into web design, is to create the online portfolio, showcase a couple of your best work, not too much, showcase nice little animation tricks, demonstrate a bit of search engine optimization as well and a bit of forms, online marketing and that’s the best way that that person can get into the web designers industry.
What characteristics does someone need to get into your field?
Creative, we have to have good attention to detail, got to make sure you’re prone to learn new stuff all the time it’s an ever-changing industry and you have passion for change with all this, you’ll be alright.
From school to now what are the steps you took to get to where you are today?
Remarkably I have self taught a lot of these things, you find that online these days you can self teach photoshop, self-teaching HTML, CSS and all you have to do is go online and Google how to learn these things, from there create your own projects do yourself a personal website, do some for your family & friends, from there you’ll build yourself a portfolio. There’s no better way than look at what’s out there check out the code behind them and copy paste and learn and modify for your website.
If you could get to where you are today but have done one thing differently what would have been?
A lot of things but the main thing I would do differently is how I program stuff. I’m pretty stubborn in a lot of ways, stuff I learnt ages ago I kept using the same principles and they’re not the most efficient, so there’s certain things that you got adopt early and in hindsight I should have done in the past.
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