Web design companies to target for internship

Fanny Cradock

Hi folks,

I've just started an internship in a small company but unfortunately I think that I'll receive little to no training. Therefore, I'm looking to target some companies that are willing to take interns on and will include on the job training. I'm primarily interested in learning about the core aspects of web design and about advanced Facebook pages.

Any ideas of who you think would be a good company to contact? (Small to medium would be most suitable, I think.)

::Edit::

I should have stipulated that I'm looking for Dublin based companies.

Fanny Cradock

Any suggestions?

pixelburp

There was a thread on this forum a few weeks back debating who the big design firms in Dublin were; it gets a bit rambling, but you could have a look at it for an idea of companies around Dublin:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056291907

To be honest, of the companies I know of, few will provide actual sit-down training beyond a more senior person giving you hints & advice now and again when they're free. For better or worse, most firms have enough to be at without giving an intern a walkthrough on the finer points of web design.

So with that in mind, I'd suggest some self-training. If you're in a small company they'll likely expect a young fella to show initiative and enthusiasm to learn new things - it's a chance to show off and explore within a commercial environment.

I'd also ask the question of what you're defining as web design here - there's many layers to that cake to consider: a fellow user here 'p' posted a handy diagram to demonstrate that: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/89613/layers-of-web-design.png Colouredy!

So are you interested in learning how to design good interfaces, with all the theory and practice behind that? Do you want to learn front-end devlopment & jump into HTML, CSS & Javascsript? Or do you wish to go deeper than that and learn how to code server-side applications?

(The correct answer btw is "all of them" because then imho you're employee golddust)

Pixelcraft

pixelburp wrote: »

Do you want to learn front-end devlopment & jump into HTML, CSS & Javascsript? Or do you wish to go deeper than that and learn how to code server-side applications?

(The correct answer btw is "all of them" because then imho you're employee golddust)

Bad advice, you'll end up being a jack of all trades, master of none - you need to specialise, there's far too much to learn everything.

pixelburp

Pixelcraft wrote: »

Bad advice, you'll end up being a jack of all trades, master of none - you need to specialise, there's far too much to learn everything.

I'm not advocating trying to be an expert in everything - I think a good web-designer should have an awareness of the various stages of the process. You can forget about the heavy-lifting such as coding, but at the very least should have an understanding up to & including Front-End design.

Pixelcraft

of course, but that's not what you said. You can't expect someone to reach a professional level in actual design, front end dev & back end dev

pixelburp

Pixelcraft wrote: »

of course, but that's not what you said. You can't expect someone to reach a professional level in actual design, front end dev & back end dev

Uhm, I was joking, hence the smiley. Taken within the context of the rest of my post it makes perfect sense

In particular, considering the OP is talking about being an intern, they should be enthusiastic and willing enough to dip into whatever facet of web-design there is. Even if it just means you can say "Yes, I may not be able to code in PHP but my front-end dev is strong enough that I could juggle the code's output if needs be to match the required markup"

Fanny Cradock

pixelburp wrote: »

To be honest, of the companies I know of, few will provide actual sit-down training beyond a more senior person giving you hints & advice now and again when they're free. For better or worse, most firms have enough to be at without giving an intern a walkthrough on the finer points of web design.

Would you know of any that do?

pixelburp wrote: »

So with that in mind, I'd suggest some self-training. If you're in a small company they'll likely expect a young fella to show initiative and enthusiasm to learn new things - it's a chance to show off and explore within a commercial environment.

I have a little formal training (Adobe Associate) and I'm not actually afraid of self-learning. However, I actually think I work better with some direction (at least at the early stages) so I'm not teaching myself bad habits or wasting time on a problem that could be resolved in minutes rather than hours. If a company is looking for enthusiasm then they are in luck. If they are looking for a young fella then I'm afraid I can't help them there

pixelburp wrote: »

I'd also ask the question of what you're defining as web design here - there's many layers to that cake to consider: a fellow user here 'p' posted a handy diagram to demonstrate that: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/89613/layers-of-web-design.png Colouredy!

So are you interested in learning how to design good interfaces, with all the theory and practice behind that? Do you want to learn front-end devlopment & jump into HTML, CSS & Javascsript? Or do you wish to go deeper than that and learn how to code server-side applications?

At this stage, I would say the top half of the chart (in particular fronted and visual). I don't particularly enjoy coding or the back end stuff - then again it's all fairly new to me. Perhaps I might end up loving PHP, JS or whatever if I understood it.

pixelburp wrote: »

(The correct answer btw is "all of them" because then imho you're employee golddust)

pixelburp

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Would you know of any that do?

I have a little formal training (Adobe Associate) and I'm not actually afraid of self-learning. However, I actually think I work better with some direction (at least at the early stages) so I'm not teaching myself bad habits or wasting time on a problem that could be resolved in minutes rather than hours. If a company is looking for enthusiasm then they are in luck. If they are looking for a young fella then I'm afraid I can't help them there

Truthfully, no I wouldn't know of companies that give you training; obviously I can only speak from my own experience, and from that companies don't seem inclined to do formal training. Afterall, what would then stop you walking out the door after the training is up - from their point of view it becomes a waste of money.

I would point out that you would be (likely) working under a Creative Lead or senior designer of some kind, and part of their job could be to mentor you in the first place. So although you wouldn't get any formal sitdown training, your upskilling would happen more organically, as you do the work & the senior team-members help you out. Like I said, they wouldn't be there to sit by you the whole time, but it would ideally be part of their job to coach you as sticky-points arose.

Leastways, that's what I'd do hehe

There's an expectation that as an intern some jobs might take a little longer - don't worry about it

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

At this stage, I would say the top half of the chart (in particular fronted and visual). I don't particularly enjoy coding or the back end stuff - then again it's all fairly new to me. Perhaps I might end up loving PHP, JS or whatever if I understood it.

Cool. Yes, no one seriously expects you to be an expert in all layers of that process I posted, I was being flippant; but if you're proficient in the top 3 of those layers, you're pretty much a solid web-designer imo.

"Jack of all trades" is a bit of a lazy slur because it simplifies a design process that potentially has a lot of overlap (especially once it moves into production), so yes - if you at least understand - in a broad level - what all those development files are and what all the magic does, developers will love you & ultimately project hours are saved. That's way down the road though, first things first!

Fanny Cradock

pixelburp wrote: »

Truthfully, no I wouldn't know of companies that give you training; obviously I can only speak from my own experience, and from that companies don't seem inclined to do formal training. Afterall, what would then stop you walking out the door after the training is up - from their point of view it becomes a waste of money.

I would point out that you would be (likely) working under a Creative Lead or senior designer of some kind, and part of their job could be to mentor you in the first place. So although you wouldn't get any formal sitdown training, your upskilling would happen more organically, as you do the work & the senior team-members help you out. Like I said, they wouldn't be there to sit by you the whole time, but it would ideally be part of their job to coach you as sticky-points arose.

Yeah, I completely get what you are saying. Thinking about it, I would work better in an environment with assigned tasks (be team or individual basis) and have somebody to go to when a bump appears in the road. It's probably the most mutually beneficial process. The intern learns by doing, the mentor supports when necessary yet is free to do their own job the rest of the time.

Anyway, I've spammed about 10 companies. Hopefully one will bite!

Thanks for the advice. It's appreciated.

Fanny Cradock

Just to add, if any we design companies/ individuals are looking for an enthusiastic worker they are free to PM me.

cormee

I can't imagine any company would sacrifice a fully trained, experienced employee to train an intern. The only training you'll probably receive is learning from your mistakes, and advice from more experienced co-workers. It's a good way to learn though.

Alas as Pixelcraft said - you need to specialise or (if you lack experience) at the very least have an idea of the fields that interest you.

Cloud computing is only going to get bigger, so Web UI would be a good one to focus on. Not sure how many web agencies get involved in that sort of thing, so you'd probably need to look at software companies. SharePoint & Silverlight are becoming more popular in this field - especially Sharepoint - so getting experience in either of those would be a very good starting point for your career (assuming you went down the Web UI road).