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The author of this post is James King, a web designer from UK. He writes useful hints and tips on blogging, building traffic, and SEO. He plans to set up on his online business in the field of website promotion. James has bachelor of Arts in multimedia production
So you want to be a design superstar? Huh? If you want to be a design superstar you need to pay your dues and work hard to get to the top of design success. The road to being a design superstar is a long ambiguous journey where you will learn so much from: creativity; productivity; search engine optimisation; and if you’re up for it how to be finically free. The path to be a design superstar can be as intense as you wish. But design excellence goes hand in hand with: effort; discipline and determination. If you want to be a design superstar, you’ve come to the right place.
Web design competitors
One of the biggest competitors is business owners. Many business owners would rather use a piece of software that magically creates them a webpage and all of sudden business owners think the jobs done and they are over the moon with the results. The results at times are terrifying. It is important, that professional web designers are capable of providing services and results that these software packages may not offer.
Professional web design is so much more than making a page look pretty. Professional web design isn’t cheap. Unfortunately for professional web designers, it may be it difficult to educate some clients over the prices of service.
I’ve noticed that many people think my prices are too high. The reason they are high, because my expertise in web design produces results, it makes customers money and provides a return on invest. The message to all those people they say I am too expensive my answer is: “You get what you pay for”.
You can pay someone who may know how to use a package that offers: 10 thousand templates and you can automatically create your own site in 5 minutes for next to nothing. However, it likely you will be disappointed with the results. I am not saying these things of spite, business owners and clients must realise that if you want quality you need to spend money. A website or a blog is an investment; it is seen as a more affordable form of advertising. However, just because someone can do the job much cheaper than a pro doesn’t mean you’re getting the same quality. You need to realise that an online presence is an investment.
What customers want? – Results
As a client or customer your purpose of having a website or blog is to produce results. An online presence is a marketing pitch to the Internet world. The Internet has a global audience of potentially billions.
Be a Design Superstar
To be one of the best, you’ve got to work hard and aim to be the best. In an industry where competition is high, you must begin to address the customers’ needs.
Learn about Google
In order to be a design superstar you must understand how Google works. You must know how to rank highly in Google and be fluent in Search Engine Optimisation. After I completed my degree I realised that all the information we were taught was useless. The content was so outdated that we didn’t even cover SEO or creating traffic. So I decided to learn as much as possible about Search Engine Optimisation wanted people to visit my sites. I needed to tell others about my site. Then I realised that Google is the best thing to learn about. Most searches that are done online are through Google. There are hundreds of millions of searches daily. Creating SEO friendly sites allowed me to excel in my optimisation skills and provide me more work
Remember that customers are paying for results and they expect a return on investment. All the websites I’ve build for clients have given them a return on their investment. My clients will continue to use me as their designer as I understand what works for them and their customers.
Create Google Friendly sites
Google reads HTML only. Google can’t read flash or even worse frames! It is vitally important that a web designer understands how Google crawls through a website. One of the best methods of having a Google friendly site is creating a blog. Google loves blogs. The structure for a blog is mostly HTML, therefore Google can read it and digestive it’s content. Really spend some time learning HTML, SEO techniques, onsite optimisation and offsite optimisation.
Have a creative eye
As they say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, web design is no exception. I’ve seen some shocking designs and I’ve seen the most beautiful designs. In order to the design superstar, you must be a great a great designer.
Are you efficient in Photoshop? Are you effective in Illustrator? Using design packages is something you must be very good at in the world of web design. Look at some of the top CSS galleries online such as:
CSSbeauty
CSSmania
CSSelite
CSS Vault
You will see that the end product uses many skills from a selection of mediums. CSS galleries are a great place for inspiration, where you can be inspired and learn so much from. When I great stuck for ideas, I visit a number of CSS sites in order to be get my creative juices flowing.
Know your code
In order to be a successful web designer you need to learn how to hand code. Learn how to be efficient in HTML and CSS. I am experienced in HTML and CSS, honestly I prefer hand coding all my sites it is faster and easier for me to do. Dreamweaver is a great visual aid; however, you shouldn’t really on Dreamweaver’s design view to get by.
The following programming languages for me have changed my concepts on design these are: PHP, CSS and HTML.
HTML
Never underestimate the power of HTML it is backbone of any website. Search engines use HTML and it is here to stay. HTML offers much more than creating the layout of a website. HTML also caters for the usage of search engine optimisation techniques. If HTML is used to the fullest extend you’ll be able to harness the power of SEO skills.
CSS
CSS Known as cascade style sheets. The beauty of CSS is where you can control the visual appearance of site from it’s: background colours, fonts, font sizes, layout structure and more. The power of CSS is you can modify the visual layout of your site with a few minor changes.
PHP
PHP is an open source scripting language that allows us to make our websites dynamic. In layman terms, PHP can retrieve information from other sources. These sources can be: other HTML files, a database or information located from a server. I like to use PHP as it allows me to make changes quickly and making me more productive.
As we come to a close of “How to be a design superstar- Part One”, think about how you can improve your current skills. There are many great books resources and websites available. Are there any great resources that you use? Please leave a comment below. Thanks.
Tags: design, designers, web designDid you miss any of these?
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Very interesting and usefull post. Did you designed for your blog ?
I feel your theme very nice!
clickktdotcoms last blog post..BuyMMOAccounts.Com, Buy Wow Game Card In 30 Minutes
Hi Clickkdotcom,
Thanks for the thumbs up on my post.
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Hi SEO tips, Hope you will have a comment on my blog ^_^
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Well.. Designing is definitely fun and coding is a cool skill but how long do you one will take to master the skills?
Ben Peis last blog post..How’s and Why’s of Article Marketing
Hi James,
Knowing how to use softwares its a must to do designs, but how long it will take to learn how to use those softwares like photoshop. It takes me quite some time to learn how to use Photoshop properly, I am not too good with coding and designing.
Luis
Marketing Business Reviews last blog post..Top Commentator Link Love – March 2009
Hi Luis,
I’ve been using Photoshop since 2001 and I am very comfortable with it. However, it is such a vast program, there’s lots to learn.
Coding does take time, if you are a good desginer it is easier to become a programmer. Than a programmer can become a designer. To be brutally honest, and I can say this cause I experience this all the time.
Some clients, think there design ideas are great, however, when they came together, some are awful, like using every font, every style going and it drowns out the design.
Clients must remember “who you hired to do the job in the first place”, it is like me building a website for a hairdresser, if they tell me how to do my job, that is not a good thing. Although, some don’t have a clue what they are talking about. The last thing I am going to do is tell someone how to do a job, that I don’t have a clue about.
To be a designer, you’ve got to have a thick skin. My skin is getting thicker.
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Hi James,
I know Photoshop it is pretty vast, I still haven´t figure it out a lot of things. But I have found an easy way to do design for banners using Word or PowerPoint, they maybe look not as professional as if done with photoshop but it can get you out of trouble when you cannot find a good and affordable designer. Maybe for you it is no problem but for guys that does not have the software or the skills to do the design for themselves this could be a good help.
Marketing Business Reviews last blog post..The First Day of My Freedom
The thing is that when a business hires someone to design his webpage, all he sees is the end result. If the result is aesthetically pleasing more likely than not he will be pleased with the result. The problems is that aesthetics is only a small part of the equation as the website also has to allow for SEO properties and stuff, which if missing will mean that he has the goods but it’s more than likely that few will see it.
Sires last blog post..Thesis Theme Is Just Not Flexible Enough
Sire ,
You are straight on the money, thank you someone who understands what I’ve been trying to tell clients. It is like a car, there’s more under the shell. So many moving parts. That we take for granted.
SEO tipss last blog post..Link Love – Week 3
Seeing as how I’ve been self employed for over 30 years I reckon I’ve learned a few things and although web design is different to what I was brought up with the basic principle is the same. I reckon that “getting what you pay for” isn’t as clear cut in this are though because there is so much more involved.
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Hi Sire,
I’ve found that with a lot of clients, they don’t understand what goes on behind the scenes and that’s the scary part. Reason being is they can justify why it’s too expensive.
“You get what you pay for”…that’s quite true from my experience. Once I wanted to change my blog banner and have a logo. I turned to a web designer who was giving out free services for a link. It turned out that his service was horrendous(one way communication – me) and the end result was for lack of a better word, ugly and I politely had the deal prematurely stopped.
Peter Lee
Work At Home Blogs last blog post..Be A Guest Blogger Get Giveaways Here
Hi Peter,
Sounds pretty bad, it is not just web design it’s in a lot of industries. One of the worst experiences, I’ve had with web hosting is from a firm called “Globat”. Never again.
So I called using their services.
For some reason, I like to do all my design work myself. Over time, that proved to be a very wrong choice, lol
Web design isn’t an easy task. However, you can learn it just like anything else.
A majority of people try to do things themselves it maybe cheaper, however, it is not always best.
If you never try you’ll never know.
It all depends on the money and skills, if you want something professional either learn it from scratch or hire someone who does it. The first way will take far less time and will probably get better results. I think the whole cross browser coding aspect of this webdesign business kills my days.
I gotta agree with you there.
Working with IE6 and Firefox can be a minefield.
I truly believe, that aside from the creators, no designer will ever take full advantage of what photoshop is capable of creating..
But photoshop is not something that most people can/should just jump into either, it’s always beneficial to have a basic understanding in art principles before trying to create your own graphics..
By the way is the competitor of web designers “business owners” or the actual websites providing the easy “drag and drop” style website?
Hi Melody,
Photoshop taken me 7 years to get to my level.
The competitors of web designers, is people who use word and call themselves a pro, it’s the people who use drag and drop style programs also, but it is mostly the people that make crappy sites for next to nothing.
Thanks to giving the great tips for design superstar.really these tips are good and useful for it…nice post ..
Excellent tips and i agree it does take time to get to a superstar level i have 5 years under my belt with photoshop now and still have loads more to learn. Ive not even touched on the java scripts that can be used within it either
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