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A web designer is an employee who designs interfaces for web applications, platforms, and websites.
What does a web designer do
A web designer is an artist of any site. Without his hand, the existence of beautiful interfaces, convenient forms, buttons and menus is impossible. The first impression of the client when they get to the site directly depends on the work of this specialist.
The work of a web designer includes:
Preparation and regulation of technical specifications
The customer explains all the nuances of the desired performance and talks about his final vision of the site. All questions on the assignment are clarified, a work plan is drawn up, the first sketches and a discussion of the functionality.
Working with layout
Drawing the approved sketch into the final layout. Artistic elaboration of individual elements, forms, buttons, menus. Light-tonal solution according to the scale of the site, corresponding to the theme and pleasant for visual perception. Special attention is paid to usability. The interface should be clear and convenient so that the user can easily navigate and perform actions on the resource pages.
Joint development with programmers
Both before and after the delivery of the final layout, the designer is constantly in touch with . All controversial issues must be resolved together with other employees involved in the development. To avoid misunderstanding between specialists, they must understand the specifics of each other's work. Therefore, a professional website artist must know the modern programming languages used, understand how CSS Cascading Style Sheets work, and what can be implemented using JavaScript.
Who suits the work of a web designer and what is remarkable about it
Not every person with an art education can start working with a web design studio without training and work experience. In this profession, an important role is played by experience, an analytical mindset, knowledge in the field of computer science, programming, website performance trends and techniques that are most popular at the moment. For example, a website full of 3D shapes, animations, a modified mouse cursor, snowfall and flying saucers won't impress anyone these days, but 10 years ago it was a work of art.
Also, the future specialist needs to master the basics of working with graphic editors: Photoshop, Krita, Gimp, Corel, be able to create animation in 3D Max. These requirements for the applicant can be seen in almost any vacancy for the query "Web designer".
Benefits of being a web designer
- Implementation of creative ideas.
- Half of the vacancies support a full-fledged.
- Quite a large demand among studios.
- International cooperation if you know English.
- Good salary if you are really an expert in your field.
Disadvantages of this profession
- Frequent disputes with an incompetent customer. Graduates of MGHPA them. S. G. Stroganova is clearly better at working with the tonal palette, but the customer sees his site as acid pink, and he cannot be persuaded.
- Inconsistent salary when working on freelance exchanges. You can be overwhelmed with orders, or you can sit without work for several months.
- Monthly changing trends, where you always need to be in the know, otherwise you will lose your status and customers will go to other artists.
- With large volumes of work, the ability to think creatively is often lost, and template activities begin.
How to become a web designer and where is it taught
The main question in this topic is whether it is worth graduating from a higher educational institution with a design profession. And there is no definite answer here.
On the one hand, for large studios, the fact of having a diploma is an undoubted advantage. This increases your authority, status, salary and chances of successfully getting a job.
On the other hand, the determining factor in the work of a web designer is still experience and skills, examples of already implemented work and accumulated knowledge. Even graduates of the world's best universities are not hired without demonstrating their abilities in business with the help of test tasks.
For a successful career, you will need artistic taste, software experience, and an extensive portfolio. A certificate confirming your qualifications will be a special preference.
How much does a web designer earn
The main place of work of a web designer is a web studio, or he can work remotely. Free work on the stock exchange implies a personal schedule, no obligations to the authorities, the choice of customers and work from the comfort of home. However, the instability of earnings becomes a serious disadvantage: you never know if there will be demand. The studio has a fixed salary.
The average salary of a designer in Russia is about 30,000 - 50,000 rubles, in the center of Moscow the price tag is much higher, 50,000 - 180,000 rubles.
What a web designer should know
Once you've started your journey into the web design profession, it's worth remembering the most important tips from web design professionals.
- Monitor the Internet daily for unusual and beautiful artistic solutions of sites. Remember and adopt the brightest tricks of competitors. Sooner or later, you will recycle them into your own.
- Develop your sense of taste, it will be important to study classical academic techniques and color combinations.
- Read literature and blogs of famous design studios. The mistakes of other people suffered over the years should make your work more productive.
- Use graphics tablets and commonly used software. No successful designer has ditched Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in favor of free simple editors.
- A sheet of paper is your best friend, all ideas should appear on it as soon as they come to mind: on the train, in the car, over a cup of coffee. Then it can be transferred to the digital.
- Work hard, feel free to take complex orders. The more you step over yourself, creating something unusual and impressive, the more interesting examples of work your portfolio is replenished with. A good portfolio guarantees a great demand for your work.
- It will be useful to learn the basics of HTML and CSS. You must understand what the layout designer will have to work with according to your sketch.
- If you learn to work freely with web programming, you can always retrain as a full-cycle developer with a higher salary.
A web designer is a job for people who can make a wow-effect, make a positive impression on a potential client and keep his attention on
site. Excellent taste, sense of style and ability to analyze are the hallmarks of a good specialist. The main factor in career growth is curiosity, continuous improvement of one's skills and the search for bold ideas.
