Web design newbie help

jambosambo

Hi all,

Ive recently decided to get into web design, Ive never done anything like it before.
Ive always been good at art and have had an interest in computers since I was young. so combining both with the addition of working my own hours been my own boss as such is the way forward for me.

Only problem is I dont no where to begin, what information I need, do I need to go to college or can it be self taught?

Or even if its a declining industry that wont have a future (highly doubt it).

any information on software, good course's or colleges, or even where to start would be a great help. I am hands up a complete noob ill hold my hands up.

Thanks

Jambo

Mister Man

Probably the wrong place for this tread. Better off in Tech>Software and Web Development>Design (or development)
Anyway - Being good at art isn't really much of a benefit. It's all about knowing what's a good and bad design, something you pick up as you go on.
I'm assuming you have no knowledge of any design programs, and have never used anything other then MS Paint?
You'll want to do some courses on Photoshop to get a grip with the tools/features it has. You'll want to really take the time to learn it. No point just breezing through it and thinking you'll scrap by. It'll start to eat up your time during a project's design phase if you only know very little about it.
Next you'll want to take a course on Website Design itself. That should cover the good/bad designs, and basic designing of websites, along with HTML/CSS
After that, you really open yourself up to a lot of different things. If you want to do some advanced websites, PHP is probably a good stepping stone. It's used on most Content Management Systems, and for some more advanced stuff too.
By the time you get past the PHP step, you'll know yourself where you want to go next in terms of learning.
As for college vs learning at home - You can do either. If you're only a young lad, might aswel start learning at home using things like Lynda.com. Then take it to college.
If you're a bit older, maybe take a PLC/FÁS course? They'll cover all the basic stuff, and from their, again, you could take it to Lynda.com and start getting a bit more advanced.
As for programs, designers will need something like Photoshop. I think you can use GIMP, but I have never used it for Website Design before. It's a free piece of software for designers. It's a good alternative to Photoshop, as it saves you almost a grand.
If you want to learn it at home, you'll want to set time aside everyday/week to learn it. No point just doing it for 10 mins one night, and leaving it for a month before coming back.
Hopefully my little essay gives you an idea of what's needed to get started. Feel free to PM if you have any questions. I'll try my best to answer them.
Best of luck with it

off.the.walls

In this order learn...

html

css

html 5

css3

jquery

javascript

css media queries(to start making sites responsive once you're done with stationary ones and good at it)

PHP (cms, forms, comments, most apps you see on sites e,commerce)

after that the worlds yer oyster.

InTheTrees

Wordpress is pretty powerful and comparatively easy. Its a very good starting point. You can begin witout any experience of HTML but if you find you're really into it you can get in deep as well. Its free too, open source.

Basically start with a theme that you pick from hundreds, then you customise it.

Very popular too so there's a lot of help online, youtube, etc.

Check out the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress

tricky D

InTheTrees wrote: »

Wordpress is pretty powerful and comparatively easy. Its a very good starting point. You can begin witout any experience of HTML but if you find you're really into it you can get in deep as well. Its free too, open source.

Basically start with a theme that you pick from hundreds, then you customise it.

Very popular too so there's a lot of help online, youtube, etc.

Check out the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress

WordPress is a good starting point if it's just a site being done. However, if you want to unleash it for designing multiple sites, you will need to do a good deal of customisation. For that, you need to have significant knowledge of the skills off.the.walls mentions, so that's the list to start with first. Add to that, PhotoShop or a similar package.

[Rasta]

Considering you have no previous experience with any kind of programming I would advise starting with just pure and simple html.
All you need is notepad and a web browser.

I started off just going through w3schools.
People don't seem to like them, however I feel for a beginner it's perfect really.

To start off you can go here, copy the sample code, paste it into notepad and save it as a .html file. Open this html file with your browser to look at it.
That is essentially the first webpage you just made.

Of course there is a lot to learn and it will definitely take a few weeks to understand things.
The most important thing to note is that you just need to practice, practice, practice.

Once you feel comfortable you can move onto css, which is used to keep the webpage's styling separate from the html file. And eventually you can move onto javascript/jquery.

redlik

Hi Jambo
I think the advise of starting with Wordpress might not be the best.
Because building a website in WP is so easy, with professionally looking theme, you may get the idea you've just become a web designer and don't need to learn anything else.
Many of us started doing web before wordpress or any cms so I suggest starting with doing proper layouts in photoshop (or other graphic app), than move into converting layouts into html/css and then, maybe by converting html files into wordpress theme, start working with cms systems.
R.