practicality: (CODE CAT)
practicality ([personal profile] practicality) wrote2012-09-25 05:29 pm
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Web Design/Freelancing

So, this is kind of... seeking mentorship? Advice? Feedback? I'm not even entirely sure what. Basically doing styles work for Dreamwidth has rekindled my enjoyment of doing design work, which kind of got buried under university for a number of years there. And I've been having a hell of a time finding any kind of job, and know already I don't mind working to spec (a few of my DW designs have been like that, actually) or working with other people's code. I also know I'm good at fluid design and CSS.

The problem is that I have no sense of how 'good' my work is. I mean, I've been doing this for over a decade, but most of the old stuff is dreadfully mired in fandom trends popular in the mid-2000s. I'm also not a graphic designer - I will spare you all the second-hand embarassment of my drawing attempts at the moment, but suffice to say original art past simple vector designs are right out. And, well, I also have no idea how to start this.

Help?
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[identity profile] branchandroot.dreamwidth.org 2012-09-26 02:34 am (UTC)(link)
If you want to work as part of a group or company, I think you're good to go. If you want to work independently, it would probably be wise to acquire some knowledge of at least one common small-site content management system (Wordpress, Drupal, etc.) so you can create sites for your clients from scratch. (I favor Wordpress, myself, despite the occasional antiquated code in places.) Having worked with the S2 templates, you're actually pretty well set to look at the Wordpress theme system, for example, and see what it's doing and move bits around.

[identity profile] momijizukamori.dreamwidth.org 2012-09-26 02:46 am (UTC)(link)
I'm actually semi-experienced with Drupal - I basically gave myself a crash course in Drupal 7, followed by a crash course in Drupal 6 when 7 didn't have some modules I wanted *g* I still have to style the damn site, though, because I've had a hell of a time settling on what I want it to look like.

Wordpress I keep meaning to poke at and then I get distracted by all the other things I have half-started.

[identity profile] tamouse.dreamwidth.org 2012-09-30 08:16 am (UTC)(link)
I think this is good advice -- you have great experience working with one (pretty great) environment for building styles, and broadening that is important. I know you've been working with Drupal as well -- make sure you understand both versions 6 and 7, 6 is still pretty big in deployment. Wordpress theming is a huge area of work as well -- people will pay for themes custom built for their sites, but they do want to see what you've done, so getting out some of those in your portfolio will be very helpful. The hot things in this arena are all the buzzwords: responsive design, fluid design, user experience, and so on. So many people think in buzzwords, of course, but truly understanding what they mean is so much more. I don't recall if you've got javascript in your utility belt, but you can start to learn about that, especially libraries like jQuery and its community. You already mentioned hooking with some communities, see if there are UX communities as well. Hanging out in DW is pretty different from the "rest of the world" where people don't ever spend more than a minute thinking about design, so I guess be prepared for that.

[identity profile] momijizukamori.dreamwidth.org 2012-09-30 09:06 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, WP does seem to be the 'it' CMS right now, so I need to sit down and play with it some. I do know both Drupal 6 and 7 - mostly because I built most of my site in 7, discovered it was missing a few modules I really wanted, and then rebuilt the whole thing in 6 *g* But I could probably use a refresher.

And I happily have O'Reilly's 'Learning Javascript' and 'jQuery Cookbook' care of cashing in on my dev perks ;)
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