What is a Web Designer? Understanding the Work of a Web Designer
Ready to become a web designer? Let’s have a look at some of the must-haves of this profession.
We all use websites. Maybe 20 years ago, they weren’t as important, but we all use them nowadays. They have become so important that we write it off if a product or service does not have one. It is as if it didn’t exist.
However, we rarely stop to think about the work that makes a website. What exactly do web designers, web developers, hosting providers, and many others involved in the process do. This article will see how you could become a good web designer. Become the person in charge of the vision that enables a web developer to code and create the website.
The Tools You’ll Need for Web Design: Software
If you know any web designers that do their work on paper, you must also know Bigfoot because those two creatures are as imaginary as it gets. Using software to design a web is only natural. Most professional website design software has a steep learning curve. This means that although it might take you a while to understand and manage fully, you’ll have some fantastic beautiful results to show for it. Learning to use at least the essential features of these programs is the minimum necessary to be a competent designer.
So which tools are the most popular and crucial ones? There are two that are everyone’s favorites: Adobe Photoshop and Sketch.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe photoshops the undisputed king of image manipulation. There truly is none like it. It is so good at what it does that a term called ‘photoshopping’ has become the generic word for any image manipulation. That’s how good it is. It would be better to ask how to use Photoshop for web design instead of becoming a web designer. Because honestly, all the steps necessary to become a web designer are possible in Photoshop.
However, despite being the absolute best software for visual design, Photoshop is not the most accessible software to learn. It will take you more than just a couple of hours to produce something decent enough to show. If someone designed a website as easy to use as Photoshop, people would tell them to go back and change it. So, please don’t use the program itself to inspire user experience.
Regardless of the learning curve, once you know how to use it, it becomes the most fantastic software for any web designer. Its manual nature makes it slow to learn but great to achieve perfect control and allows you to do what you had in mind. This power and control capability makes Photoshop the undisputed king in the world of web design. So, if you want to start a web design career path, you should first learn how to use Photoshop. Fear not, thanks to its great popularity, there are plenty of free tutorials and courses on using it like a pro.
Sketch
If Adobe Photoshop is king, Sketch is the young prince. It has a long way to go before becoming a king, and one of the reasons for this is that it is exclusive to Mac OS. Instead, Photoshop can be used on Windows and Mac OS. This is one of the main complaints that Sketch gets from many web designers.
Another difference between Sketch and Photoshop is the price and the payment model. Sketch costs you $99, and you get a year of free updates. After the year ends, you can still use your program version and decide when to rebuy the license to get the new updates. This lets you wait until you see an update that you need. Instead, Adobe Photoshop has different monthly subscription plans, but they are all more than $99/year.
Sketch is what you need if you are trying to get into web design with a more accessible option than Photoshop. It has a more intuitive interface, and although you can’t control as much or go as deep as you do with Photoshop, you can still achieve great results.
While Photoshop does have many more features than Sketch, it feels like Sketch is better at letting you do your thing. It gets out of your way more than Photoshop. However, both programs are still great for high-end designers and average, only-starting-out designers.
Sketch has a massive advantage over Photoshop, and that is that it was specifically created for web design. On the other hand, Photoshop is more of an image editor, and although it can do an excellent job for web design, it wasn’t born for it. Additionally, Sketch is very good at releasing new updates that adapt to your ever-changing needs.
The best advice for a starting web designer path would be to start with Sketch. This way, you get a better idea of what you can do and how to do it. Then, once you have a good grasp of web design with Sketch, you can jump on to Photoshop. This way, you won’t get frustrated, and you’ll start learning Photoshop with a better idea of web design, the work it takes, and the ideas you can achieve.
Money Matters
We all know that whether you like it or love it, if you get into a new industry and a new job, the question about money will arise. Because let’s face it, we all have bills to pay, and it’s essential to know the financial reality of a career you are looking to get into.
Of course, there will be differences based on your experience and skill level, but some averages will give you a better idea. For example, this link is where you can find the average web designer salary across the U.S.A. and other countries done by ZipRecruiter.
Additionally, according to glassdoor.com, the average salary for web designers in San Francisco, California, is $69,125 per year. In London, United Kingdom it is around £30,163. So basically, a web designer salary is more than enough for you to live off of it, especially if yours isn’t the only income in the house.
As with everything, it’s good to know the money side of things, but you should start learning and seeing if web design is something you will genuinely enjoy and understand. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how good the average salary is, you will not be happy to work on it.
Summing up
If you want to start learning web design:
- Choose a program to learn how to use, Photoshop or Sketch, depending on your capabilities with programs and the operating system you use.
- Move on to learning about web design: how to set up websites, what layouts are best to use and why, the user journey when accessing your site, etc. Look for inspiration on great websites and the internet.
- Start learning and using your imagination and creativity to be part of this ever-growing industry.
Thanks for reading!
