Web Designers - do you have any design qualifications?

cormee

I'm curious as to what % of people who sell their services as Web Designers have any formal design qualifications. All disciplines count.

Sully

Moving to Design forum.

Topic Moved

HandWS LTD

This is interesting. I've already said yes. I'm suprised with people saying no.

TitoPuente

HandWS LTD wrote: »

I've already said yes. I'm suprised with people saying no.

Why? Some of the best designers I've worked with don't have any formal design qualifications. At the end of the day your creative flair, raw talent and toolset knowledge is much, much more important than a piece of paper! I'd never hire a designer on his/her credentials - only on his/her portfolio of work/proven ability.

HandWS LTD

TitoPuente wrote: »

Why? Some of the best designers I've worked with don't have any formal design qualifications. At the end of the day your creative flair, raw talent and toolset knowledge is much, much more important than a piece of paper! I'd never hire a designer on his/her credentials - only on his/her portfolio of work/proven ability.

Thats true.

p

cormee wrote: »

I'm curious as to what % of people who sell their services as Web Designers have any formal design qualifications. All disciplines count.

Clearly, there's a follow-up question to this. Why not just ask this.

cormee

p wrote: »

Clearly, there's a follow-up question to this. Why not just ask this.

No, there isn't, it was curiosity on my part.

I do see an awful lot of desperate looking websites from people selling their web design services and wonder what the hell they are thinking of. But I've seen awful work from both trained and untrained designers.

A formal design education does provide you with a good starting-point on a design career but lack of a design qualification can be overcome quite quickly by producing nice designs/work and having good/relevant experience. Especially in the likes of Web Design where there are no formal 3rd level study options/qualifications available unless you go for a broader qualification such as digital media or something.

I studied Industrial/Product Design and ended up in UI/web design, I think my commercial experience benefited me more when I did change over than my design qualification.

ntlbell

I would have thought what you see pretty much goes for every industry out there.

I'm not a web dev or a designer but did do it as part of a course and what I learned was at the time very outdated and the amount I learned I could have picked up from a few hours reading a decent book.

As someone mentioned earlier about creative flair, I have zero, so all the books and all concepts in the world wouldn't help me.

I could probably write the XHTML to adhere to standards and properly formed CSS it would be all very basic but from a cosmetic point of view it would be pretty damn ugly.

Where would a formal qualification come in a list of priorities for hiring one?

Have you ever even been asked do you have one from a client?

cormee

ntlbell wrote: »

Where would a formal qualification come in a list of priorities for hiring one?

Have you ever even been asked do you have one from a client?

Not from a client, definitely from an employer.

p

cormee wrote: »

A formal design education does provide you with a good starting-point on a design career but lack of a design qualification can be overcome quite quickly by producing nice designs/work and having good/relevant experience. Especially in the likes of Web Design where there are no formal 3rd level study options/qualifications available unless you go for a broader qualification such as digital media or something.

I studied Industrial/Product Design and ended up in UI/web design, I think my commercial experience benefited me more when I did change over than my design qualification.

I think web design is moving so quickly that people are self-taught can manage to easily compete, because many colleague courses aren't great.

However, if you're talented a good course can really raise your game far more than learning on your own. Many web designers don't know the basics of design such as typography, grid layouts and proper design fundamentals. I think if you did a visual design/communications course and self-taught yourself the tech skills then you'd be far better setup as a web designer than most people.

jmcc

Web design crosses the boundaries between software/programming and art. The problem is that it is moving so rapidly that it can be difficult for college courses to keep up. Often the people teaching the college courses are not exactly bleeding edge web developers. In terms of design, some grounding typography and layout is a good thing and web devs should read a book or two on it.

Regards...jmcc