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Careers in Web Design

The Web recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Since its founding in 1989 as a single Web server at the CERN Research Institute, the Web has exploded and changed our lives dramatically. Jobs that were imagined are now legitimate career paths with plenty of opportunity and promotions to be had. So how can you get in on this action?

  • Where do you start?
  • How do you transition into it?
  • Is it all so code-ish, or are there jobs for those with less technical skills?

In this article I’ll walk you through different career paths in web design fields .By the end of this article you’ll have a solid understanding of possible career paths making your living in Web design. So if you’re ready, let’s get started with careers in website design.

Web design’s careers types

User experience (UX) careers

Have you ever visited a website and thought wow, I have no idea how to start and I have no idea where to find anything? Or have you thought, there must be a better way to streamline this process? If so, you’re flexing your user experience muscles. 

User experience, or UX

User experience, or UX, is the planning portion of website and application development. In other words, what are the goals of the company and the users, and what do they want to achieve? 

  • Who is this for in terms of the target audience? 
  • How are they accomplishing this goal now? 
  • How can we improve that process? 

User experience professionals often spend their time talking with lots of people.

  1. They develop an understanding of what their company or their client wants to accomplish.
  2. They identify target audiences, understanding in detail who wants this product including the following :
    1. Demographics
    2. Psychographics
    3. Technical levels
    4. Where they’re performing the task
    5. What type of electronic device? 
  3. They’ll figure out website organization, including how the navigation is organized, and which links go where, a field called information architecture.
  4. They may help in prototyping new interfaces via a process called wire-framing, where websites are drawn on paper, or in software at a very simple level.
  5. UX professionals recruit target audience members to participate in user testing, where prototypes are tested to make sure they’re effective, meeting established goals for improvement.

UX is a great place to start if you’re a curious person who enjoys research and learning about all kinds of new fields. Some professionals have a background in psychology, or they’re just interested in how people think. Those interested in website organization may have a background in library science. UX professionals are open-minded, ready to receive feedback from users and managers. They also have some strong opinions about what makes users happy and what makes a great interface, but they’re also ready to let those opinions go if testing shows that they’re wrong.

In terms of software, there’s not much. Many UX professionals work with the usual Microsoft Office or G Suite applications, like word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. They may use software for prototyping, like Adobe XD, Sketch or prototyping tools like Envision, Balsamic, or Moqups.

Finally, UX professionals are a huge fan of the humble sticky note. They’re useful for all kinds of organization in naming projects that they might be involved with. 


Graphic design careers

Do you find beauty in the world everywhere you look? Do you love watching HDTV and old Bob Ross painting videos? Are you intrigued by colors, type, and organization of elements? If so, you might want to be a graphic designer at heart.

Graphic designers

  • Graphic designers are responsible for the look and feel of all types of products.
  • In the world of applications and websites, graphic designers establish brand elements like logos, typefaces, and colors, and they create beautiful usable websites in the process.
  • Graphic designers for websites and applications work closely with the UX professionals to establish an interface. While the UX people make sure that it’s usable and page elements are findable, the graphic designers add the right colors and polish to make it beautiful.
  • When they’re not working directly on existing websites, graphic designers might be creating meme images for social media, advertising assets and working on layouts and designs for new pages and site designs.
  • Graphic designers often have an innate sense of beauty. They often have several years of education and practice working with colors, typography, and layouts. They may have a background in photography as well with expertise in lighting and composition, as well as tweaking photos to perfection. While some people develop these skills on the job, it’s not uncommon for a graphic designer to have attended art school.
  • Graphic designers are typically big fans of Adobe products. Photoshop is one of their big tools, used for working with photos. They may also create logos using Illustrator. InDesign is typically used in printed products, but it may occasionally also be used in web work.
  • Graphic designers may overlap with UX skill sets using Sketch for website layouts or working with prototyping tools like Adobe XD.

Do you think graphic design sounds like fun? start with it.


Front-end or user interface (UI) careers

When you were a kid, you loved playing with LEGOs and building blocks. You’re excited by the IKEA furniture assembly process. In other words, someone else thought of it and designed it, but you are all about building it. If so, you might be a front-end specialist in the web world.

The front end of a website : is the customer-facing portion of the site, the part you see when you visit any website.
There are tons of job titles for this type of work. You might be :

  • An interaction designer
  • A UI specialist, a front-end designer
  • A front-end developer
  • You might just be a web designer

Whatever the name, the front-end specialist typically works with the UX and graphic designers to get a specification for how the front end of a website should look and function. You might program this using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or you might work on little animations to help further the user experience. You might be involved in some of the prototyping or research work in the interface. However, typically front-end designers and developers are involved at some level with the programming of the website’s front end. You’ll definitely interface your work with colleagues and management in this type of role, but you may not interface much with your clients. There will be some days you spend the whole day in front of the computer, while other days may be full of meetings.

Coming into this work, you may already have a background in some programming languages, but this isn’t a hard requirement. A willingness to learn is all that’s needed. If you have a good aptitude for music, math, or science, these are indicators that you might do well in this field, as many front-end designers have expertise in these areas or they find that they think in logical, linear patterns. You’ll want to have a solid understand of HTML and CSS before starting this work, and knowledge of JavaScript is also very helpful. In terms of software, UI specialists use all kinds of tools. They may overlap with some of the UX and graphic design software packages like Sketch, InVision, or Adobe XD. They also have some software of their own, notably software for editing code, frequently called an IDE. Examples include Sublime Text, VS Code, Brackets, or Atom. Commonly, UI specialists will also interface with the command line and services like Git, GitHub, and Node.js. Sound like fun? Want to give it a go? There are several possible learning paths for user interface and web design.


Content strategy careers

Are you one of those amazing people who always know the right thing to say at the right moment? Are you super organized and a great communicator? Do you love playing with language and thinking creatively about new ways to communicate a message? If so, you might be a content strategist.

Content strategist

A content strategist has a magical way of knowing exactly what to say and when to say it. They coordinate with client goals, marketing plans, graphic designers, and technical teams to get a message communicated across many channels in a timely manner.
Content strategists plan exactly what will be said and when it will be said on websites, in advertising via social media, and sometimes in offline channels like radio, TV, and printed publications.
Obviously, content strategists are gifted communicators. They’re typically great writers but they can also work with graphic designers to create interesting infographics or memes. They may work with the technical team to get content posted on websites, but, depending on circumstances, they might wind up posting lots of the content themselves. They also know tons about search engine optimization so all of the great content that they create will actually be found by search engines.


Finally, content strategists are responsible for two very important jobs at their organization.

  1. One is to create a language for talking about the company’s products and services.words used to describe the company’s products and services .
  2. Content strategists are also responsible for the company’s voice.
  3. They are responsible for making sure that all of the communications are on-brand with that voice and taxonomy that they establish.

Marketing careers

If you’re about promoting the right product in front of the right people at the right place and the right time for the right price, well, you might just be a marketer.

Product, price, promotion, place, and people are the five Ps of marketing, and they’re at the heart of any type of marketing career.

Web marketer

A web marketer is still interested in those five Product, price, promotion, place, and people , but they’re more into online promotions and selling online, rather than an offline strategy.
Traditional marketing concepts are still critically important for a career in web marketing.
Those concepts include:

  • Branding
  • Competitive analysis
  • Developing a value proposition
  • Understanding customers and the customer journey
  • Combining these concepts into a marketing plan.

Internet marketers have additional concerns. They need to know something about their major marketing channels, like video, email, social media, and websites. Search engine optimization and writing for search engines is a critical skill. They also need to understand how to strategize and measure their marketing efforts through tools like Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and various social media marketing tools.


Working as a freelance web designer

Are you excited about working for yourself, making your own hours, and working from home, and living wherever you are right now? Do you enjoy learning new concepts, sometimes not in your area of expertise? If so, a freelance career in website design and development might be a perfect fit for you. 

Freelancer

A freelancer is a person who owns their own one-person business. You’re the only employee, so you do it all, for better or worse, including Human Resources, Accounting, and Facilities Management, in addition to your area of expertise. 
Freelancers work with a lawyer to establish their business structure, work in their city and state to get proper licensing to run their business, work with a bank to set up a business checking account. And then, there’s the many potential clients that a freelancer speaks with every month to find interesting projects to work on, as well as business networking with other freelance professionals. 
In terms of an area of expertise, that can be anything you like. Some freelancers specialize in writing content and developing social media strategies. Others may combine UX skills with the ability to build a site in Squarespace or Wix. Sometimes, you’ll need to learn skills that may not be of interest to you, but are critical to improving your work. For example, a content strategist will likely need to learn about search engine optimization. Great writing is important and should not be minimized, but there are other interesting tips and tricks to learn to make sites perform well in search engines. This is often described as a T-shaped skill set. You’ve got deep skills in one area, but you have, as they say, working knowledge of areas close to yours. 
If you’re interested in freelancing rather than working for an employer, don’t just go quit your job and go for it. One of the hardest parts of freelancing for many is getting clients and additional work. For that reason, many freelancers start by working out of their homes in the evenings and on weekends while they work a day job. Once there’s enough work for freelancing to be your day job, make the transition at that time. 

You can learn much more about the web design’s career , available at LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.

Finally i hope that the article help you to check one of them , hope you like it ,thanks .

Resources :

  • Lynda.com

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