Best Route for Web Design Certification

sillycow

I want to study web design online if possible.

Due to long term illness it will make it easier for me to study online but a few days on day courses would be ok too once most study i could do flexibile from home.

I have been searching high and low online the last few weeks so figure out best route to take but still unsure.

I see alot of web design courses seem outdated with just dreamweaver, fireworks and flash offered. I have a liittle knowledge of these packages through work placement a few years back but from what i've seen heard the last while it seems photoshop and easier packages are used more for webdesign.

Basically what i'd like to be able to do at the end of the day is small web sites for companies/small businesses in my area.

I have a keen interest in design for years and was good at graphic design in school for my leaving. I have a good eye for design but i need to find a course that would be most useful for me.

I already have good computer knowledge. I am going investing in a mac soon which should help too.

Would love to hear from anyone in the industry with advice please.

cormee

Hi Sillycow

I wouldn't worry about web design certification too much if I was you. There is no standardised, recognisable academic award in this field (that I know of) and there are so many bad courses out there they almost render the reputable courses' awards useless.

In my opinion, if you have the time to spare you should try teach yourself using online tutorials and general experimentation, start building a portfolio site and use that as your lab, you'll learn a lot more through trial and error than you will in a class doing handouts.

Also, put a lot of focus on design itself, you shouldn't become obsessed with the tech side of web design. If you're interviewing for a web design position a nicely designed simple site will probably get you more interviews than an ugly high-tech site.

Someone also asked the same question in the design forum, http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=23 , and I said another good way to get your CV noticed is to specialise on a particular aspect of web design - ie. accessibility, usability typography etc. and to make that speciality a big feature of all the sites you design.

link8r

sillycow wrote: »

I want to study web design online if possible.

you should be able to learn by studying what the best designers are doing and what you find online. But having someone point out the not-so-obvious stuff really makes that learning go faster. While you're looking for the right course, why not learn by apprenticeship and take on work from a busy agency. It seems the Irish web industry is very busy at the moment.

A lot of designers/agencies/other are on twitter - its a great place to interact with the industry.

sillycow wrote: »

I see alot of web design courses seem outdated with just dreamweaver, fireworks and flash offered. I have a liittle knowledge of these packages through work placement a few years back but from what i've seen heard the last while it seems photoshop and easier packages are used more for webdesign.

I've had a 10 year ban on using Dreamweaver but some people like it. You make a good point differentiating between web page assembly and design. Design technically (I know someone is going to disagree with this) doesn't require a knowledge of HTML. And then, writing HTML is slightly less exciting than watching paint dry....

sillycow wrote: »

I have a keen interest in design for years and was good at graphic design in school for my leaving. I have a good eye for design but i need to find a course that would be most useful for me.

If you can appreciate colour, layout, fonts, style, imagery, contrast, then you probably will find this easy to learn. Why dont you just start building some sites. you can get freeware graphic editing apps or buy them on ebay 2nd hand (really). When you actually start working on a project (say for yourself or a friend or charity or family) then you start to find out what questions you really need answers to - like what tools, what hosting platform, what scripts, etc

sillycow wrote: »

I already have good computer knowledge. I am going investing in a mac soon which should help too.

I'm not sure how a mac will make you a better designer! Most websites aren't necessarily designed on macs. Photoshop is still photoshop, colour is still colour. Websites look the same on PC's and Macs. I agree the Mac community is much more designer orientated but invest in the right developer tools, not the OS.

sillycow wrote: »

Would love to hear from anyone in the industry with advice please.

I encourage you to post on the Irish web master forum too - some really helpful people. I really like @forbairt on twitter - he does some really cool stuff.

thecelt

does anyone reccommend any sites or good online tutorials?

JoeyJonson

w3schools.com is pretty good for reference I find. It isn't wonderful for learning a huge amount but very good when you are stuck for some HTML or CSS help

pcbscott

http://www.developphp.com/

I Started using this website about 6 months ago and used the info on it to build my first site for a client.

I cant fault it; most of the major topics you would want to cover are there and the guy who does the videos is hugely entertaining and knows his stuff.

Good luck