What qulalifies you?

[scwebsites]

I was just wondering, those of you who build websites, either for yourself or for other people, did you study design, programming, web dev, at college, university or any other professional courses, or did you learn as you go along?

I know many very talented web designers and programmers who have no professional qualifications at all, myself I did a bit of both but I have to say most of what I do today was learned from other people or simple trial and error.

I think web development, design and marketing change too frequently and move so fast, professional qualifications are often of very little practical use.

 

[accelerator]

When I started in web design years ago, I did a course at my local college. However, I don't have any formal qualifications. I didn't find the course that helpful, and I'm mostly self taught. After learning HTML, I added Dreamweaver, Fireworks, a bit of Photoshop, ASP.net, then PHP.

I think what "qualifies" you as a designer or developer is the quality of your sites. As an affiliate I do hardly any design work now, but if I was looking for work, I would put together a good site with a full portfolio of my work. That's what people will judge you on.

Rgds

 

[Ashton]

I am entirely self taught, I have a true passion for great design and making websites I find it really fun (even years down the line!)

There is a saying that a freelancer is only as good as their last job. This is completely true, your work defines your quality and expertise, not qualifications. Some of the worst designers I have met have 'design' qualifications. This being that they are stuck in the past and don't learn the changes in their field.

 

[scwebsites]

Some of the worst designers I have met have 'design' qualifications. This being that they are stuck in the past and don't learn the changes in their field.

I could not agree more with that. If I had stuck with what I learned on courses and not developed and diversified my skills, my sites would be very basic.

 

[Ashton]

Precisely, I had a client recently who had taken a web design course only a few years ago. His knowledge was shockingly backward, firstly he was willing to pay a huge amount for table based design, wanted in in html (not xhtml) and to put it mildly, was totally unaware of modern design.

 

[vizzo]

Self-taught. But have learned a lot through forums such as webmasterworld.
Met someone who needed a bit of help with her site who went to a course at the local college. What they'd taught her was about 10 years out of date - They still seem to be teaching people to design websites entirely using frames!

 

[monaghan]

The problem with courses is that the material taught is only as good as the required examination at the end. No point in teaching XHTML & CSS if the students will fail for not producing a table based design that will tick all the examiners boxes! So many generic IT qualifications suffer similar problems (when I first studied the Microsoft MCP courses there was no mention of mainframe or mini-computer connectivity, yet in the real world this was one of the biggest challenges facing companies trying to implement NT into the workplace)

Web design is a combination of graphical skill and technical programming skill, often people only have 1 or the other. I'm happy crafting fancy code but I'm only average with my graphical skill so tend to use template designer tools and will use something like Drupal for the site and code up custom modules where required.

When I started there were no courses and very little graphical content as many early users were still migrating from 2400 baud modems to 9600 or 14400. Most designers were UNIX gurus cranking out simple sites with a bit of PERL CGI where form handling was required I did look at a night school course a few years ago, but decided I'd not actually get anything other than frustration by doing so.

 

[davedevelopment]

I feel very qualified as a developer, but I struggle with Developers trying to Design Syndrome!

CV in a Paragraph:

I've got a degree in Software Engineering, been working on in house web apps for a construction company for 6 years now, mainly PHP/MySQL, but dabbled in Perl, C, C#, Ruby and Python along the way. I'm a Zend Certified Engineer (both PHP4 and PHP5 versions), have experience with most of the major web app frameworks (ZF advanced, CakePHP intermediate, CodeIgniter intermediate, RoR intermediate, Django beginner), and I'm well rounded with javascript, including dojo, mootools and jquery. I'm a fairly accomplished systems administrator, self taught on the job.

Dave Marshall BSc MBCS ZCE

Hoping to add CEng to those letters after my name, despite never actually putting them after my name (with the above exception).

I'm totally unqualified with regards to:

* SEO
* Marketing
* User Experience
* Graphic Design
* Business Management
* Turn a 'product' into a popular site/service

And all the other stuff I need to learn before I can conquer the world

 

[techtimmy]

I did a Media & Cultural Studies degree at Uni. Quite an open course so i was allowed to choose topics such as web deisgn. 7 years on, everything i learnt at Uni about building a website is pretty much out of date.

Working as a professional web person now I find I have to devote a lot of time to reading about web design on the web. It's moving so quickly that you have to be really on the ball to keep up with new ideas and practices.

 

[scwebsites]

Web design is a combination of graphical skill and technical programming skill, often people only have 1 or the other.

Very true, although judging by some of the portfolios I have been looking at from 'web designers', and I use that term very loosely, in my local area, many have neither.

Very impressive CV davedevelopment, do you take on sys admin work? I could do with someone I can turn to for help now and then.

 

[davedevelopment]

Very impressive CV davedevelopment, do you take on sys admin work? I could do with someone I can turn to for help now and then.

Thanks, I've always put a lot of effort into describing my skills well, even blogging about CVs for PHP developers (http://www.davedevelopment.co.uk/2008/12/15/landing-a-php-job-part-3-curriculum-vitae/). Like someone mentioned though, a freelancer is only as good as their last gig.

I don't take on sys admin work as such, too much liability in my mind for off the cuff jobs, but if you ever need a little helping hand, drop me a PM. To be honest, I barely have the time either, I work full time for my employer, try and develop my own sites and I have one client (from AD) who I do freelance development for (I probably can't even work quick enough for him, but he understands I run the full time job on top).

 

[infoman66]

I do web design for 8 years. I had the current state of knowledge of graphic design. Everything else I have the entire way. If I now must pass the entire route from the start, I would have requested a specialized school for web designers - I'd as soon get relevant information ...
Although solidly handled with the programming languages PHP, MySQL, Java, etc.. for demanding projects always consult trained programmers ...
I think school is important, but not a prerequisite for good design ...