Web design has long ago become a profitable career. This results from the never-ending advancement of technology and the evident relevance of the use of the internet for communication and business. With such a vast job demand, many people decide to make a living in web designing. Needless to say, there are specific skills one needs to master in order to become a web designer. Here, we’ll show you which ones you’ll need.
Programming Language
Being able to read and work with a programming language is most probably the first skill you need to hone. Gain an understanding of HTML, CSS, or any other useful language such as JavaScript, Swift, or Python. These are a must for designing the layout of a website. Moreover, programming language also involves learning about responsive design, User Interface, and User Experience, which are a must for this activity.
Designing Tools
All in all, a designer is not a developer. Therefore, web designers need to understand and work with design tools. Some of them include Mockups, Debugging, and graphic editors like Vector and Raster.
As one might expect, each tool serves its unique purpose, which means that web designers need to comprehend and manage successfully different instruments. Each one contains special features to personalize a website according to the requirements of the client. The more you know, the more tools inside your toolbox.
Time Management
This is a relatively overlooked quality that makes a significant difference. Although almost any job demands meeting deadlines and proper management of schedules, for web designers it is a must-stick-to rule. Proper organization is crucial when working in such a fast-paced environment, and failing in it could lead to drastic negative results.
Web designing requires being attentive to a wide range of tasks, and if one fails to complete their “to-do lists”, these tasks may pile up. Not only this would lead to late submissions, but also to a poor-quality designed website. Ironically, the art of timing takes time to fully develop. The sooner you start developing this habit, the better.
Attention to Detail
One may be an expert at coding and understanding how designing tools function. One might even have hundreds of ideas and vivid imagination, but if attention to detail is not acquired, the other skills are futile. As the information found on excitemedia.com.au states, a great design is not enough to attract customers. Each client is unique, and so is every website. Details are behind that uniqueness, achieved with the right color combinations, by conveying meaning with reification and using invariance to highlight specific areas.
Lastly, consider how attention to detail drastically reduces the possibility of making errors. To be an efficient web designer, start developing the habit of attention to detail. It is just a matter of putting it into practice.
Search Engine Optimization
A good SEO helps rank a website higher in the search engines such as Google or Yahoo. The higher the rank, the most likely the website will be visited. Ultimately, the quality of the SEO defines which sites will be visited, and which ones won’t. Of course, there are fundamentals that need to be addressed in order to create an SEO-friendly website. So, web designers also need to know how search engines operate, in case the client doesn’t provide that information.
Typography
Picture this. You enter a business website to contact its team and make a deal. However, its interface is terrible. The words are excessively big in certain areas, while in others, are too small to read naturally. Worst still, everything is written in Comic Sans. What do you do? You leave and find a competitor’s website with a more friendly layout.
We highly doubt someone will choose Comic Sans as its go-to font. Nonetheless, a website with inappropriate typography use is bound to scare clients away. Words need to be eligible, both easy and comfortable to read. It is not enough to choose the right words, it is also important to choose the right size and position, the right color, and the right shape. After all, they are part of the website’s design as well.
Anyone expecting to become a web designer might believe it’s frustrating to learn these too many skills. Naturally, it seems that knowing about design is not enough. There is also knowledge about marketing, logic, and fonts. It just seems too much.
However, we encourage you to take it easy, and not be demotivated. Some of these skills need to be honed from the very first steps of web designing, but others are mere habits that can be earned through experience and practice. If web design is your dream job, aim for it, and master these abilities during the process.