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11-21-2012, 05:11 AM
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whittwhitt is offline whittwhitt
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Hey! I am currently a high school senior possibly interested in becoming a website designer. I am wanting to pursue a career that would allow me to work completely from home (web designer/computer programming/web developer) - I am most interested in web design. I've read online that taking college courses for anything computer related would be a waste of time and money because of the rate at which the computer evolves ... so if I do decide to go into web design I would teach myself.

How feasible do you think it would be that I could do web design and make a decent amount of money (enough to live on)? The average salary of a designer is around $40-50,000 annually.

I'm new to the world of designing/this site, are there any members here that could help me find a place to begin? Any books/websites/videos you would recommend? I'd love to see some of your work with website designing and am interested in how long it took you to learn how to design!

11-21-2012, 06:20 AM
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newkid is offline newkid
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I you're are serious about pursuing a web design career I'd advise you to the college route. It is not a waste of time to go to college for this but depending on your situation and what goals are then learning on your own may be the best choice.

Decide exactly whether you would like to build your own start-up, get an online job, or working freelance (all of which can be done home). Afterwards, select the option that suits you. Do take your lifestyle as much as your interests into consideration.

If you do choose to learn on your own, how fast can you learn? This industry does change often and rapidly at that. Are you able to do research and learn on your own? An essential and indispensable skill to a designer, programmer or web developer is being able to learn quickly and adapt to change.

It is possible to earn a decent living in both the sofware and web industries. However, you will have to acquire about 3-5 years of experience depending on the specific field and skill-set. You would have to play your cards right though. It is very competitive. I'm just saying it how it is. A lil trick I discovered (and wish I knew when first started) is that you can seem to have 1-2 years of experience with a strong portfolio so keep that in mind while learning. It'll give you that small leap forward.

Learn the basics and concentrate on honing your skills. Do this for a year (if not going the college route) without thinking about making a profit. Use the web's best websites for examples as to what is right.

Here are a few sites to learn the basics:

www.w3schools.com (begin with HTML)
webdesign.tutsplus.com (preferably begin with http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/sessio...design-theory/)
http://www.webmonkey.com/
webdesign.org (begin with web design basics)

specifically for programming:

many beginners worry too much on which language to start in. Don't be one of them. This page explains this well
http://lifehacker.com/5401954/progra...lf-how-to-code

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/basics-...les-datatypes/


Last piece of advice. Don't get caught up learning software to help you develop software (called IDE's) or those to make the web design process easier (called WYSIWYG editors pronounced Wiz-ee-wig) at this stage. Believe me, learning to do things is a lot harder at first. Mastering them this way is far more rewarding.

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