Are you a mega multi tasker extraordinare?

Does this look familiar to you at all?

Duties for the Creative Designer / Developer include:

• Creative concepts and brand design  to secure new business
• Routine maintenance and development of the client websites many of which are developed in .net and aspx with full CMS functionality
• Introduce and update new web content, including generation of new graphics/images
• Design and development of striking HTML e-newsletters for direct marketing activities
• Manage complete website lifecycle from initial idea to launch
• Supervise website traffic levels, search engine rankings and other performance indicators and adjust content accordingly
• Keep up to date with keyword and competitor online activities
• Keep up to date with modern web trends and make suggestions for improvement of the Company’s online activities

Ideal Creative Designer / Developer Candidates:

• Good academic achievements to degree level or equivalent in web design, multimedia or similar digital field or suitable level of experience in lieu of qualifications

Essential Skills Required

• Good eye for aesthetics, and creative design, with thorough working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite products including Photoshop
• Some hand coding skills with HTML and CSS
• Familiar with coding to XHTML standards in compliance with W3C
• Excellent cross-browser compatibility awareness
• Working knowledge of aspx or .net
• Demonstrable web design/implementation experience with a strong portfolio

Advantageous Experience

• Understanding of responsive web development with mobiles and tablets in mind
• Design of email newsletters and direct mail
• Understanding of SEO principles
• Working knowledge of WordPress, php, jquery and JavaScript and XHTML.
• Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools
• Presentation skills

Now I apologize to the company who sent out this advertisement if you do in fact recognize it as your own but I haven't named you don't worry. This was one of the first jobs that I plucked up off of the creative pool website and I just want to go through some of the requirements for this role to make a bit of a point here.

Firstly there is the conflation of the ambiguous creative designer role with that of a web developer. For anyone out there who is in either field, or has tried to do both, they will know that they are basically two completely separate, and fairly extensive skillets to learn individually. To have both to a good standard is certainly an impressive feat. That's not to say that it doesn't happen because it does, and congrats to those of you out there who are web design, UI design, and development specialists all at the same time, you truly are in my eyes a genius, and a champion of the design field. Most of us can't do that though and I think it is fairly reasonable to assume that is because we have lives outside of our jobs! No I'm just kidding with you I'm sure even the design/ developer genius's have lives too. It's more of a time investment than it is anything else, and usually the deciding factor of someone who has all the time in the world to skill up and someone who has very little, is resources. We all have to eat. So I guess what I am really getting at is how did you get to a point where you could do all of this stuff if you weren't otherwise connected, mentored, and fully funded from he outset?

So lets assume that you did an Art & Design related A-level or two, or maybe you went down the route of going to college and getting to grips with a more vocational style NVQ or Diploma of some sort, and that gave you a practical grounding in color theory and different mediums etc. What you got there was probably your training wheels and a sense of play. Great so now you are intrigued by the wider world of design and off the back of your starter courses in Photoshop you've decided to go and get a degree in graphic design. That is the way it happens for most people so lets stay with this example. University is in most cases (but not all) going to be trying to teach you how to properly research and develop a concept and come up with something really creative. Excellent way to learn how to brand a company and help draw people in just using your noggin and a bit of thinking outside the box, so I guess you've got point number one of the Job ad covered with that. Creative concepts and brand design to secure new business.

Now then if you are one of the more savvy Design students then you may have secured an internship or two whilst still at University, and a lot of the design related ones do tend to involve updating and maintaining the company website, as it is something they don't often have time to do. If your lucky you will learn either before or during that process about a couple of Content management systems Like Drupal, or Wordpress which will mean that you at least know what .NET and ASPX actually mean. For those of you who don't, check out these links on the W3C and they will clear up all your questions (unfortunately I don't have time on this post) http://www.w3schools.com/asp/asp_intro.asp So there you have it you now have an entire coding language to learn along side your degree and most probably your part-time job and your internship as well. If by some miracle you have managed to achieve this then you are well and truly on the way to having achieved the specification on this job.
Routine maintenance and development of the client websites many of which are developed in .net and aspx with full CMS functionality.

The next duty on the list is quite a simple one and it is to generate and update new web content which is by and large one of the simpler tasks on this list. If you have gained any kind of mastery of the software involved over the time on your course then you will be able to do this with ease. So that's number three down. Introduce and update new web content, including generation of new graphics/images. 

So the job ad moving down then jumps into another one of those tasks that could be a field in its own right, email design and coding. Due to the lack of standards compliance and compatibility across email clients most good coders will tell you that you have to code like its 1999 and jump back into tabular based emails and do all kinds of CSS hacks that you just wouldn't dream of in a web design or application. If you have of course been learning your coding languages amongst everything else and have a good grasp of something like CSS3 and HTML5 which are fast becoming the norm then you are going to have pretty much drop it and go back to the old ways on emails. So you are now looking at knowing 3 or 4 different coding languages and there extensions. Now if this wasn't a skillset to be contended with already then have a look back at the rest of the list;

• Supervise website traffic levels, search engine rankings and other performance indicators and adjust content accordingly
• Keep up to date with keyword and competitor online activities
• Keep up to date with modern web trends and make suggestions for improvement of the Company’s online activities.

On top of everything else you now need to be an SEO expert as well. This is probably not that difficult to learn but it is most certainly a time consuming set of tasks to complete and I should imagine that along side designing organizing, coding, updating and implementing all the other sites and emails you have to deal with that you are swiftly running out of brain-space for more at this stage. Now I think that you get the picture and there is no need for me to go into the chances of you having there extra "advantageous experience" such as responsive design, Jquery, JavaScript, PHP, and Google analytics.

The unfortunate part of all of this is that this is what your average design job spec looks like these days, and that is including the Junior positions. So even if you have worked your arse off during and around your studies you are likely to still not be on top of every latest trends in design, or experienced enough to take on the job and hit the ground running. You will nearly always get beaten to the punch by someone who has the years of experience because they got there foot in the door when it was much easier to do so. The internet is awash with industry professionals complaining that graduates do not have the skills for the roles. Which is a lovely privileged position to be speaking from if you started your career 12 years ago when there was only one or two web languages and one platform to design for. It was only yesterday that I ended up in a discussion through Linked groups, where somebody posted a conversation that said what happened to all the true designers and how come all the new graduates are just software junkies? This question is a fairly loaded one in itself and as you would imagine sparked a fairly heated debate among graduates and veterans alike.

My opinion on it all comes from a place that embraces the feelings of both parties (because I'm nice like that). Everybody seems to be drowning in technology. It all boils down to this one uniting factor, "the speed of production". If you now have tablets, phones, laptops, TV's, interactive billboards etc. and they are all considered to be primary channels of communication. Then the obvious consequence is that you now have a harder job as a company to market yourself and get yourself in front of as many relevant consumers as possible. It's expensive I am sure! Perhaps it would be better, instead of heaping the responsibility of working these channels onto the only existing job role that fits "the graphic designer", and to create a few more better fitting and specific job roles that can handle each part to a good standard. It is of course happening slowly but surely because there is a great deal of difference between a motion graphic designer and an animator, as well as between a digital designer and a print designer. Its the greedy folks at the top who are the problem. Trying to make there staff all singing and dancing. All it does is upset people at every level. Those whos primary job and skill was to conceptualize and build a brand and personality, feel that they are being squeezed out in favor of button monkeys. Those who feel that they excellent software skills and abilities to make beautiful visual presentations feel that they are being left out due to a lack theoretical and conceptual based skills. Obviously it would be better for all if you had two separate people doing there jobs to the best of there abilities even if they are the polar opposites of each other. I am aware of course that this is a fairly utopian idea of how things should work, but somebody somewhere must make the demands for a better set up for even a chance of it happening. Today that is me!

So here's what I'm gonna do. If you decide to follow in my footsteps then that's up to you. As of today I am going to work hard, not at trying to fulfill every given job specification that is ever thrown at me and keep skilling up. I am instead going to skill back. I am going to streamline my efforts to what is necessary to my business. Let me explain that a little better. For example I am pretty competent at Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Fireworks. However I mostly don't code in Dreamweaver, I use TextMate so that program is pretty much redundant to me (it merely serves the purpose of letting employers know that I understand WYSIWYG editors). Also I generally only use Fireworks to make quick changes to PNG files whilst building websites. Again though it is a rare usage so not in the top of my priority list of program's to go to. What I spend the majority of my time in is Photoshop designing interfaces and digital artwork. I can safely say I am pretty good with it and super comfortable using it. I don't think by any means it has hurt me to know about these other software, but I will be focusing my efforts on remaining expert level with my favorites rather than a blanket approach to whole suite. The same goes for coding languages. What I feel I will gain from this is a more niche market and a happier set of clients. Plus the chances are I will be able to stay much truer to what my price bracket is, and wont have to sell myself short in order to gain clients and there trust.

I will of course, as I do with all of my endevours, come back to this at a later point and let you know exactly how that goes. You never know it may go swimmingly well and it might also chuck up some other interesting factors to talk about. For now though this is all I have to say on the matter. So I hope I have offered you something interesting to think about. Until next time goodbye and thanks for reading.

How can you make money as: Web Designer?

That might sound like a fairly obvious question with a fairly obvious answer but bear with me now because I think it is a little more complex than it would seem at first. There is a massive market for web based technology now more than ever. The world we live in relies heavily on the internet for business and communication alike so naturally it would follow that somebody needs to work on designing these web products. The front end of any web page is guaranteed to have been "designed" as even though there are a number of consumer products that allow the average person to play designer, (even MS Word) the fact remains you still need some degree of design training and understanding for it to be of any real value and have proper functionality (or of course natural talent). Anyway what I want to do here is outline some of the ways in which the web designer can profit from his or her skills.

What are you designing?

More than likely, as most people do, you assume that web designing involves designing web pages for a living and you are both right and wrong about this at the same time. Of course you will as a web designer be designing web pages somewhere along the way but you are not by any means restricted to only this. Even if you were there is far more to it than just laying out a page. Your main concern if you are designing web pages is usability. A web page is not the same as a magazine in that it is interactive. You will still have to make the page in a way that visually stimulates the user but the main thing is going to be making sure that the information is clear direct and readily available at the click of a button. Websites need to be easy to use and obvious in there navigation otherwise people will get either bored, or frustrated, or both quickly, and leave your site. Bearing this in mind your skill set then, should be more of an interaction, or interface designer, than that of a static designer who would be more concerned with wow factor from first glance than usability at second look. Another thing to consider is that the layout of the page and subsequent pages is going to require a lot of art working which will be things like background images, texture effects, buttons, headers and other branding elements that will help bring the site to life and give it a certain personality. The next thing to consider is moving or dynamic elements of a page with which the user may be able to interact with, or could be a short animation or  moving part of the site like a rollover button etc. Then there is the world of social media and communication. It is common nowadays for a website to have social media built into the page so that the publisher can put up to date information on the site regularly without having to worry about complicated CMS clients. You might see an RSS feed button or a live blog posting built into the site. You can also design Facebook business pages, and custom blogs to match the companies branding, so there is growing demand for these types of skills. Email is the most common communicative device used in business today and the fancy interactive newsletters that you receive are also part of the web design remit. 

Where will you be getting this work from?

Probably the most important thing to consider is who will be paying you? If you are a freelancer and I mean the kind that literally bangs on doors and gets there own clients then the answer for you will be simple. Your clients that you secured will be the ones paying you, and how much you make will be down to how much you charge so you will have to be careful not to price yourself out of the market or sell yourself too short. Seeing as this is the trade you are in you should also know that the internet is your friend. It will be your livelihood and income source at the same time if you play your cards right.

For example the web designer of today can do a lot to make money on the side selling website templates. Market place sites like http://themeforest.net/ and http://www.templamatic.com/ make it really easy for you to earn royalties on every sale of the template that you make. This way also you get an accumulative income from your designs rather than the one off payment you could expect from a purely bespoke design you may have done for a client. There are numerous other websites that will allow you to sell vector images like Icons you may have created or buttons left over from previous projects.

Whilst we are still on the topic of making money online I may as well bring up another model such as http://www.crowdspring.com/ which works similarly to a competition brief. You pick the project and then submit your design idea to the company and should they choose yours as there favourite you get the money that was offered for the project which is usually around 650 pounds for a small website under 4 pages. This might seem like a waste of time considering you are not guaranteed to win but you can always replace any branded elements like logos with generic images and then sell them as templates on the previously mentioned market places if you don't win. So overall it isn't the worst idea in the world and can be great fun just for practice if you are new and need to try out working on live briefs.

You can also use social networking to your advantage and piggyback other people projects because often in the world of web design the developer and the designer need to work hand in hand. In groups and forums and social networks like linked in you will often find advertisements from developers looking for designers to help them finish a project so depending on your skill level and negotiating tactics you may be able to gain work via this method.

If you are not thinking of freelancing at all then you are probably going to be one of two things and that is a designer who works for a creative studio, or designer who works for an agency. If you are a designer who works for a studio then you will be part of a small team working on whatever it takes to get the project done for the client gained by the studio. The same applies to working through an agency except you may not be required on site at all as you will effectively be a freelancer albeit one with access to a regular stream of work. Or the other thing that I haven't mentioned is being an in-house designer. If you take on a massive project such as a football clubs website for example then this is going to need constant care and attention and you will most likely be hired to take care of all the web and graphical needs for the duration of its lifetime which can be a rewarding or limiting experience depending on your viewpoint.

How will you get there?


I said when I started this blog that I would try to give advice that was based on my experiences and had some real world application and so I appreciate that the above mentioned things could be a little too vague to have any real value. But what I will say is this. I have tried most of these things out for myself and none of them are easy, they take a while to get into and a few attempts to get any return so you will have to have some patience.

I went to college and studied multimedia and at that point had no real understanding of web design even though I was taught a little bit about dreamweaver as part of a unit somewhere along the way. When I finally got to university to study graphic design my course was so based in conceptual and historical knowledge about graphic design that any technical knowledge had to be gained in extra workshops and outside learning of my own. This still wasn't enough knowledge to do anything to a commercial standard with so I went and did a few internships but most of them didn't teach me anything and expected me to know everything already so I only really got to understand what web design was all about by building one for myself as a portfolio website. In that short space of time I began to understand why people often say that web designers should have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS because without it you simply cannot understand what your design is asking of the developer and some things are simply not feasible at all. My advice therefore is to learn how to build websites by building them for you and your friends or whatever. The internet is full of learning and you won't need to do a degree in order to find out what you need to know. Just do it and then you will have a portfolio that will land you some paid clients wether that be through online marketplaces or asking around is irrelevant. The key thing here is to produce work and keep on perfecting your skills. The way the world is now everybody wants a website so you won't have a hard time finding work.

Why choose a career in Graphic Design?

The philosophy

I think that in all fairness choosing a career is one of the hardest things a person can do. With the variety of different industries that exist today and the exposure we get to the possibilities within those fields from a young age the choices really are endless. 

Ironically enough some of the most successful people on the planet never really chose their careers at all. In reality they just stumbled into them over time through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events. Don't get me wrong now I am not suggesting that you don't choose a career at all because these people all had goals. Steve Jobs knew for example, that he wanted to work with computers and systems. If you have ever listened to one of his inspirational speeches you will see that he made choices based on his reality at that moment. He did not try to predict the future, because trying to pick a career isn't that different from trying to predict the future. It assumes that you know something of how you are likely to develop as a human being, how the market will continue over the years, and what the need will be for your specific skill-set.

Now looking back on my own choices and what lead me into a career in graphic design I can tell you that there was very little predicting of the future going on. I, like many other young folks out there at the time, didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life, in many respects I still don't. All I knew was that I was fairly intelligent (although my schooling hardly reflected this), I had a few obscure talents such as sports, music, and drawing and that I didn't ever, ever, want to live the life that so many of my parents and there friends lived. 

What was this life I hear you ask? well it conssited of conversations that revolved around furniture choices and what was on the front page of the news paper and the behaviour of the neighbours, marital spats, living beyond ones means and generally having a life that was a carbon copy of every other person within a hundred mile radius. There was nothing wrong with it as such, but I found it all thoroughly uninspiring. I must have been just about to leave school when I realised all of this and so I set about going to college to do something that appeared to hold some promice of the future. It was a multimedia course at the time but to me it seemed like a gateway into cool, modern up to date liberalism and culture, and a far cry from what I already new and was so bored with. The reason I bring this up is because it is an example of my reality at the time and the choice that I made towards my current state of affairs. I had a goal in mind and the vehicle towards this goal was irrelevant.

The possibilities

I suspect that most people considering a career in graphic design are considering it for these kinds of underlying motives. Probably because you think it will allow you to avoid office politics and talk about cultural issues all day, and because it will somehow give you license to wear super sleek modern glasses that you would never have normally considered, and because like everyone else these days, you are addicted to coffee and the internet so you may as well make the leap and join the forces of people who rely on them to get there work done. You probably beleive that you will go to cool hip parties where other cool hip graphic designers party, and your music collection will be so up to date nobody will have heard of any of the bands. And you are right about these things, they are all true of the proffession to an extent. But there are a few realities of the trade that you should be made aware of if you are genuinely thinking of going down this route.

The reality 

Being a graphic designer does not make you cool! It never has and it never will and all the best graphic designers are seriously uncool people that don't go outside. That is because they are so intertwined with what they do they have forgotten what the world looks like when its not printed up in helvetica. 

Being a graphic designer does not pay well. Unless you happen to be some kind of guru that is snapping up the latest advertising campaigns left right and center you are likely to be working for an average wage doing run of the mill jobs like business cards for your local bricklayer.

You do not get to avoid office politics you just get a different kind of office politics and most people think that you quite literally draw for a living and will therfore stick there noses up at you wherever possible.

You can dress like a wanker if you really want to but it is only going to make people think that you are indeed as they always suspected....a wanker.

A degree in Graphic Design is step one of getting a job and it is the third most popular degree in the country. You have an awful lot of competition so you had better be good at what you do! You are going to have to prove it time and time again, also there are something like 135,000 graphic design graduates a year and only about 20,000 job roles to fill.

The hours are basically as long as it takes until the job is done.

The software and the technology that you use will become outdated the minute you master it so you had better like the idea of reskilling on a regular basis.

The internet has created a space for ametures to take over where proffessionals once were and so what you are left with is a minimum requirement of skill level. This is high! You are going to have to become all singing and all dancing to compete with the masses.

People will often try not to pay you for your work and you will have to get used to the idea that people don't like your stuff. It is highly subjective but something that you will have to get used to none the less. 

The last thing that I would like to say is that it can be expensive breaking in. The software is pricey and a machine powerful enough to run it will set you back as well. Not to mention extras like a digital camera, a drawing tablet, a printer, paper, ink etc. 

Where do you stand?

Now having said all of those things above it is still a rewarding career and there are many subdivisions within graphic design that will give you room to breathe. Some graphic designers double as artist and interior designers, others start up there own printing firms, and some freelance in digital and web design, the list goes on. It is really about figuring out exactly what you are good at and swinging your career around to that. The only way you are going to do that is by trial and error and don't be afraid to end up doing something completely different from where you first started because all the fun is in the journey! I think that if you are inclined towards the creative arts and you happen to have some talent then graphic design is as good an industry as any, and probably holds more chance of you getting a pay check for your efforts than being a painter of a sculptor. So get down to your local college, get stuck in and see where it takes you.