Web designing is all about creativity and technical skills. Today, business runs on websites. It is the fundamental need of the digital marketing strategy. Therefore, businesses are constantly in need of creative and efficient web designers. It makes web designing one of the most lucrative careers. With creativity, computer literacy, and in-depth technical skills, you learn how to become a web designer from scratch.
On the one hand, designers need hand technical proficiency to build a high-end website. On the other hand, they need to have artistic sense and also the ability to understand the business they are making the website for. But if you are determined, you can become a web designer within a year. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to tell you step by step how to become a web designer from scratch.
Our first step is to understand the web designing industry so that you know what you are stepping into. As a result, we will give you every possible thing you need to know to become a web designer from scratch.
Table of Contents
What is Web Designing?
Every business, organisation, or even individual providing any kind of service needs an online presence. From a school teacher to a CEO, everyone needs a web presence. This web presence is called a website. Creating and fashioning these websites from scratch is called web designing.
Web designing refers to creating the appearance, layout, and fashioning the website for the purpose it is made for. Unlike software development, web designing applies to the user experience and the outlook of the website and its functionality. It includes designing the website, application, and services.
Web designing is an essential part of any business, as it helps to retain visitors and even turn them into customers and regular members of the website. Therefore, web designing involves using great visuals, fonts, colours, and layouts to make the website user-friendly.
Types of Web Designing
In today’s date, a website must be multiple devices friendly. The website must fit in perfectly on a desktop and on a mobile device as well, and must be easily browsable for visitors. Keeping this in mind, there are two kinds of web designing: Adaptive and Responsive.
Knowing and understanding when to use either of them is very important as a web designer. How to become a web designer from scratch is very much linked to these two types of web designing. Let’s have a closer look at them.
Adaptive Web Design
Adaptive web designs are graphical user interface (GUI) designs. It involves making multiple versions of a website so that it is compatible with a variety of screen sizes.
There are two main forms of the adaptive website:
1. A website that adapts based on the type of device that is used.
2. A website that adjusts according to the browser size.
The advantage of adaptive web design is that you can make custom designs quickly and easily without code. In addition, they adjust to different sizes of devices and browsers and load quickly at the same time.
But you will miss out on some of the effects that are part of responsive design. Sometimes your site can look broken when it is opened in a smaller browser window of a desktop.
Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design is also building a website that looks great on all kinds of devices. The responsive design utilises a flexible grid layout that depends on the size or percentage each layout element takes up. However, the ratio of each component to the layout stays the same.
Moreover, responsive websites can use breakpoints to form a custom look at different screen sizes. But unlike adaptive sites that usually adapt only when they hit a certain breakpoint, responsive websites design constantly changes according to the screen size.
For example, if a single element takes up 30%, it will remain 30% even if the size of the screen changes according to the device through which a person is accessing the website.
Therefore, the website visitor experiences a uniform and stable website which is easy to navigate across any device and browser. However, when you are new at building responsive websites, you need to carry out a lot of tests. In addition, it is important to know coding to create responsive web designs, and custom responsive websites can be fairly hard to build.
Who are Web Designers?
In order to know how to become a web designer from scratch, let us take a look to understand the profession of a Web designer.
A web designer takes web designing as a profession and creates the whole website. Your job is to plan, design, and code a website or webpage. You will also need to combine text, sound, visuals, graphics and also video clips.
Hence, you will be responsible for creating a website and web page layout according to the purpose of your client or business. Furthermore, you can work on a completely new website for a brand or update the web design of any existing website.
The main part of your web designing job will be to create unique websites that are aesthetically pleasing, have great functionality, and are easy to navigate. You will need creativity, critical thinking, and technical skills to make professional websites to carry out this responsibility.
Responsibilities of Web Designers
Here are some duties and responsibilities of a web designer:
1. Understanding the objective and requirements of your business or clients for whom you will be making websites.
2. Create a unique website by spontaneously deciding the style, layout fonts, and colour schemes.
3. Creating and inputting content, graphics, and images.
4. Show initial design ideas to clients.
5. Making the site and optimising it so that it is search engine friendly.
6. Test the website to see if it’s functional.
7. Adding new features to the website.
8. Uploading and publishing content to the sites.
9. Register web domain names and organise website hosting.
10 Do coding using different software, making the website functional.
11. Work with many kinds of content management systems.
12. Work with a content writer, web developer, digital marketing strategist to make the best out of the website.
13. Provide technical support.
14. Staying updated with the latest web design trends and technologies.
15. Developing and upgrading your own skills by continuing professional development activities. Skill up yourself with all the recent and new web designing software.
How to Become a Web Designer from Scratch?
All these things are better said than done, right? So here is how to become a web designer. Not to worry, it’s not a really tough job. It’s quite the opposite and fun to do web design once you start building the websites.
But nothing comes out without some determination and hard work. Once you get the hang of the basic things, you will be on autopilot to improve your web designing skills. Speaking of which, let’s get into the steps that are the path of how to become a web designer from scratch.
Education
Let’s start with the education you will need in order to know how to become a web designer from scratch. You can start your web designing journey with just your high school qualification. As web design is a kind of art skill, you do not have to pursue a complete university degree to pursue this career.
You can find several courses out there that will teach you web designing from scratch. One of these is our very own Diploma in Web Design Business. Here you can gain skills, get industry insight and learn theories to web designing.
However, if you want to have a backup, make a strong resume that stands out from others and get highly professional training in web designing, a university degree is necessary. You can choose a four-year program in computer science and in today’s date, there is a web designing program as well.
Therefore, you can take a higher national diploma or degree in:
- Web Design and Development
- Multimedia Design
- Digital Media Development
- Interactive Computing
In order to enrol in any of these programs, here are the entry requirements.
- 1 or 2 A-levels, or equivalent, for a higher national diploma
- 2 to 3 A-levels, or equivalent, for a degree
Achieve Web Designing Skills
To become a brilliant web designer, you need to have certain skills, which are compulsory in this industry. As we discussed above, you can get into this line with your high school qualifications and choose to take a degree.
In both cases, you have to develop the skills that a web designing career needs. It is the first mandatory part of how to become a web designer from scratch. Hence, to kick-start your web design career, here are the skills you need to possess.
1. Drawing skills
You do not have to be a pro artist or highly excel at drawing, but you need a bit of drawing skills to become a web designer. You have to present your ideas at a moment’s notice to your client and peers. Drawing helps to quickly illustrate your ideas. Web designers and graphic designers must have the ability to draw graphs and grids to show their layout plans. You are already into the web designing process if you have the basic drawing concept like sketching shapes, shading sections, drafting out menus, and including basic logos.
2. Attention to Details
The web designer has to be detail-oriented. Web designing is all about paying attention to the smallest details and build a perfect website. You have to create a layout that has a solution to all the problems a user may face while using the website. Therefore, by paying attention to small details, you can give your website a polished design to look pleasing to the eyes, make it professional, and offer the required functionality. It pleases your clients and peers when you give priority to details and shows how much you prefer quality.
3. Creativity and Uniqueness
Though web designing is mostly doing technical work, it is based on creativity and uniqueness at the core. You need to represent a brand through the website. It has to be unique from the rest of its kind, for which there have to be lots of creativity and original ideas on your part. Creativity in web designing can involve working with elements like non-traditional colours and make them work. If your website is visually appealing, you have done more than half of your web designing job perfectly.
4. Communication skills
If you are designing a website for your own purpose, you know what is best for it. But when you are working with clients or for a company, you need to have a great level of communication skills. You often have to pitch your vision for the website to your clients and employers, that will need amazing communication skills to convince them. Likewise, you will also need to understand and listen to your peers to see what they desire and what kind of website they want. Communication hence is a valuable skill that you cannot avoid.
5. Desire to Learn
Web designing is an integral part of the digital world. But the digital world is constantly changing, coming up with new and better ways to do things. What we are trying to imply is that new software and ideas are continuously being developed for web designing. To keep up with them, you need to have the desire to learn new things continuously. It will help you keep up with the latest trends and technologies and help you come up with new ideas.
Learn Web Theory
As a web designer, you will be the architect of the website. Therefore, all designs and architecture abide by theories and rules that you must follow. Applying your creativity and web design theories together will help you build amazing websites. Hence, the second important thing about how to become a web designer from scratch is to learn and have a clear understanding of web designing theory.
Creating a website with good web design includes user experience (UX), visual elements that align with each other, along with structures, and colour theory. Overall, web theory helps you know how to organise a website and what components should be in it. You can learn all the web designing theories through different web designing courses. The Complete Web Development and Design Course can help you with it.
A website with good design and UX will retain visitors for a long time, and a bad one will repel visitors. To make yourself knowledgeable on this theory, you can read books on web designing and also watch and follow successful web designers’ work.
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Learn to Operate Web Designing Tools
As a web designer, you have to be an expert in a collection of well-known web designing tools. From the dawn of web designing to days date, many powerful web designing software and tools have been developed to make the work of web designers easier and better.
As a result, web designers must know how to operate the most commonly used tools and software to create beautiful and functional websites. In addition, you need to be an expert on tools related to graphic design, prototyping, and coding.
In order to become a web designer, here are some of the tools you can work with:
Adobe Photoshop –
Essential for editing images and graphic designing and creating eye-catchy images and graphics.
Adobe Illustrator –
A graphic software to scale down web designs and artwork from the size of a mobile screen to a billboard.
WordPress –
A content management system that helps you build, edit, customise, enhance, and optimise websites.
InVision Studio –
InVision is also a tool to design a website that has rapid prototyping, transition and animation features.
Dreamweaver –
This tool helps you to directly code your website design, even if your programming is not good. For newbies, it has pre-made templates and tools to create attractive and responsive designs.
Sketch –
It is an essential tool for creating interfaces and prototyping. In addition, it is a life-saving tool for vector drawing and graphics.
Google Web Designer –
A great tool for making compelling and amazing HTML5 content.
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Learn Basic SEO for Web Designing
One thing that will make an in-demand web designer is being able to deliver more than web designs. The website must be made in such a way that it is not only user-friendly, but it has to be easy for search engine bots to crawl through it.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising your website that helps it increase visibility in search engine’s result in page (SERP). While making and a website or optimising it, web designers need to focus on organic promotion. You can do this by enhancing your website performance, tweak it to load fast, optimise the website for multiple platforms, and give it great content. The website has to be relevant and provide value to its target audience.
Learn Basic Programming Language
Though it is not the most important thing for a web designer to know at an early stage but learning a programming language will highly benefit you. Furthermore, it can be difficult to work in a web designing industry without any knowledge of the programming language. Knowing coding will give you many benefits, like you will be able to create more proper ideas and see if your design is technically functional or not.
Therefore, the most necessary programming skills that you must have are HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). While HTML helps you set the structure of the website, CSS gives you the styling option. You can also learn JavaScript. It is one of the most popular and in-demand programming languages. Moreover, it helps you to create advanced websites.
You can also gain skills in programming languages like Flash, Python, and PHP to be the best web designer.
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Design your Own Websites
You might want to take a big leap and design your own website. It is the crucial part of how to become a web designer from scratch. You have the stock of all the skills, tools, and languages you will need to design a website.
Start by designing a website for yourself. Moreover, start as soon as you have a handful of skills and knowledge. Grow your authenticity in the search engine. Google trusts websites that are regularly updated and have been around for a while.
Your website has to showcase your skills to potential clients and employers. It will act as your professional home page and portfolio where people can find your abilities, availability, and rate. It is especially useful when you want to become a freelance web designer.
Research different niches and industries and make demo websites for them. It will also help you find out what kind of niche you work best with. As a result, you will find your area of strength and develop in it.
Apply for Web Designing Job or Find Freelance Work
How to become a web designer from scratch is incomplete without giving the career scope. As this profession is in demand, there are lots of positions available for a web designer. Software and advertising companies, outsourcing companies, theme, and template makers are always in search of creative web designers.
Hence, here are some of the positions you can find and apply for as a web designer.
- Web Designer
- Front-End Developer
- Front-End Designer
- UX/UI Designer
- Product Manager
- Visual Designer
- Interaction Designer
- Mobile Developer
You can freelance your work and be your own boss as well. You won’t be bound by a 9-5 job. Building a portfolio and freelance your website designing skills in Upwork or Fiver. Work at your own pace and time and also for the niche you are an expert in.
What is the Demand and Income of a Web Designer?
According to Bill Gates, “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.” In the light of Statista live data, 1.88 billion websites, today and this figure is currently increasing at a fast rate. Therefore, people need web designers to build and maintain websites and keep them up to date with the fast-paced world. As a result, there is a high demand for web designers, and it is not decreasing any time soon.
Lastly, in how to become a web designer from scratch, let’s look at what you can expect from a web designing job. Generally, a web designer’s job is from 9-5. But you may have to work extra hours to meet deadlines on weekends or when there is more workload.
Though it is not one of the highest-paying jobs, it is still one of the most in-demand and successful career options. When you are just starting off with web designing, your salary can range from £18,000 to £24,000 per year. Experienced web designers of four to six years and more can earn £24,000 and £40,000. As you become a senior web designer, you can earn £40,000 or even more per year.
How much you will earn also depends on the facts like your location and the size of your company. For instance, the salary range tends to be higher in London and the South East. One of the best ways to get a high figure salary is to specialise yourself in the emerging technologies and software for web designing.
Here is a list of industries that hire web designers:
- Advertising, design studios, media agencies
- Software companies
- Businesses
- Freelancing
- Educational Institutes
- Publishing houses
- Audiovisual media companies
- Manufacturers
- Department stores
- Printing and typesetting firms
- Government and quasi-government organisations
- Marketing firms
Last Thought
Web designing is a combination of creativity and technicality. As a web designer, you will work with your imagination and build the best possible website. It can look pretty challenging to learn how to become a web designer from scratch. But once you are in the flow, it is one of the fun jobs you can do. To help you with how to become a web designer from scratch, our course in Diploma in Web Design Business is very efficient. Enrol today to become a web designer.
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