My Path to Website Design

How to navigate your way to a career you will love.

About Me
Hello, my name is Hayley Crook, I am a 24 year old female who lives and works here on the Gold Coast. Within this flyer is my story of how I become a successful website designer. I hope through reading my story you will have a better understanding of the path ahead and you consider working within the Website Design industry.

Web What?
My interest in website design first started when my mother came home from work and said "a good friend from work has just taken a $60,000 per year job as a website designer." Well that got my attention! I was in year 11 at school; I spent a little time on computers and did art at school so I thought I would look into it.

Learn HTML
(The language behind websites)
I started printing out articles off the internet about what websites were and how to build them. Soon after I bought my first book on "How to Learn HTML", I started reading and doing the exercises in the book, I found this much easier to follow then learning off a websites. You don't miss anything when you are going step by step through a book.

Apply what you are learning
To really understand and apply what I was learning I needed to start building a real website. I found the best way to do this is pick a topic or hobby to base your site on. I chose my favourite PlayStation game at the time (Abes Oddysee) to focus on.
I spent a couple of hours after school each day working on my website and after a few months my little 5 page site was working and I launched it onto the big wide web. (You can host your website for free using hosting services like tripod.com & geocities.yahoo.com)

Learn Graphic Design
I had built what is technically a website but it sure wasn't pretty, time to learn some graphic design skills. You can start with whatever software you have available on your computer, I started with "Paint Shop Pro" (Photoshop CS3 is recommended).  Consciously start to take notice of what makes a website look good; the colour combination, how things are spaced out, the font choice for the text etc. 
To practice you can try to build an exact copy of a website you like, this will help you to learn how they create their effects. Building good looking websites takes experience and time, the more you design the better you'll get.

Get Experience
In year 11 I volunteered to work on my schools website, I also built a website for a neighbour and continued to work on my game website while I was still at school. With each site I was learning what questions to ask and what I need to gather from my "clients" to build their websites.

Time to Study
After completing school I enrolled in a TAFE Diploma of Multimedia course, it was a full time 18 month course that covered a wide variety of subjects.  From design, flash animation, 3D design, video and audio editing and website design. I really enjoyed the course and learnt a lot of valuable skills. As with most IT courses they don't teach you how to be a "Designer" they teach how to use the industry standard programs and you can develop your skills in your own time from there.

Get a job, built a portfolio
To get a job you need to show what you can do, as a new graduate employers don't expect you to know everything, they just want to see where your skills are at and your potential.

The best way to demonstrate your skills is to build an online portfolio of your work, it should contain your best work from your study assignments, fake designs you have done, websites you have created for neighbours and friends, everything that illustrates your abilities.

Apply for most website design jobs, even if you're not completely qualified they may have another position available for you.

After applying for many positions I was lucky enough to get a job 6 months after graduating, it was part time and low paying but I was learning heaps. The company consisted of my boss, another designer (about to go on maternity leave) and myself. You will learn the fastest when you are with other designers, the amount of short cuts they know are amazing.

For over 4 years I built up the company with my boss, learning the business as well as design.  During that time I trained other designers and become the senior designer for the company. With no future opportunities available with my current employer I resigned and took the opportunity to travel.

The Future: To WORK for a business or to OWN a business?
I took a few months off work to travel around Europe in 2007 (highly recommended), then took up a new full time position here on the coast. I was still doing a few websites for my own clients and the demand was growing. For every website I did I received a couple of referrals. After 3 months I resigned from my full time job and became self-employed.

I set myself a weekly wage goal and worked hard on developing my business. I aligned myself with a programmer who could help me complete any custom website work outside my skill set (shopping carts, ordering systems etc). I have been self-employed full time for over a year now and the business is going strong.  I found I am suited more to owning my own business than being an employee. Everyone is different and you will know which will suit you best.

The best advice I can give to anyone starting out in website design is;

• You will never know everything.
• You will always keep learning.
• Do quality work, have good customer service and you will never have to advertise.

What I love about website design
Continuous learning: Every website is different, for each website you build you learn a something new and get a little bit better. Not to mention learning about the subject matter of the websites you build, gardening, finance, health you name it I've probably built a website about it.

Evolving technology: Almost nothing stays the same in IT what you learn at University may not be current by time you graduate, keep in touch with the industry through newsletters, website articles and friends in the field.

Creative Freedom: We'll most of the time... not every client will love your style, remember to design for the client not for yourself. If you are a creative person website design could be a way to make a nice living and express your creative side, opposed to traditional art careers where very few people can be paid well for their work.

If you would like to know any more about my journey or website design jump on my website: www.blueteddy.com.au and send me an email, I am happy to answer your questions.

By Hayley Crook - Website Designer