Careers are Made Here

Career as a Web Designer - Conversations with an Icon Maker, an Art Director and an Auditor turned Designlogger

Whenever I have an Idea I write it down, even if its not a very good idea, sometimes the bad ideas lead to better ones - Steven Snell

Creativity is surpassing limitations and making changes - Anthony Zinni

Attention to Detail - Wolfgang Bartelme

Does web design, creative design require a formal education. What is the most important skill required to be an excellent designer. How would one start, how would one progress on a career path as a web designer. These were some of the questions we posed to a panel of accomplished, successful and passionate designers.

Its an honor to introduce them.

Wolfgang Bartelme: Called variously as "Uber Design Hound", "one of the modern masters in online design and creativity", "the king of multi-colored wallpapers", Wolfgang is well known in the creative design community as the one with the ability to capture an application's purpose in the most confined of areas, in an icon. Wolfgangs Microformat Icon Devkit and Wordpress themes are being used in all sorts of applications and web sites. In fact there are 975,000 references in Google for "Designed By Wolfgang Bartelme". Wolfgang lives in Austria and his design company Bartelme Design focuses on creating standards compliant web sites and professional icons for websites and applications. Follow him on Twitter.

Anthony Zinni: A multi-disciplined designer who is a big proponent of designs that are practical and measurable, Anthony has the ability to come up with designs that are both aesthetically pleasing and effective. His Positive Space blog, a nod to the idea of content vs presentation, covers inspirational roundup and practical how-to's about working as a professional graphic designer. His recent "The Personal Web Design Degree" project is a direct response to the question "What do I need to study to become a web designer". The personal web design degree is an open education curriculum that teaches both beginning web designers and seasoned print designers design within the context of the web. A very laudable project to introduce and train the next generation of creative web designers. During the day he is the lead art director for AssociaDirect and LEVEL2 Marketing Group located in Chicago Illinois.

Steven Snell: A successful web designer, Steven also is a prolific blogger and freelance writer. Out of college, armed with two degrees, one in business administration and the other in Bible, I doubt he would have made anybody's list of most likely to succeed as a web designer. In fact he was an internal auditor before he quit to become a web designer. Today he not only manages a thriving Vanderlay Web Design but also runs DesignM.ag, a blog/community for web designers and Traffikd, a social media and internet marketing blog. In his 40 hour days, he also contributes and freelances interesting articles like Redesigning Craigslist With Focus On Usability,
Advantages and dis-advantages of working with multiple screens, 8 addictive habits of bloggers etc. Steven is married and lives in the burbs of Philadelphia. His Twitter.

Q. When and how did you get started in web design?

Wolfgang: I started doing web design around 12 years ago. In the beginning it was just for fun and to be honest my first sites sucked. Both from a coding and from a visual point of view. During my studies of "Information Design" however I developed a better understanding of how to do visual appealing designs and semantic correct markup.

Anthony: I actually began web design in late 1998. I was in high school and our school had a web development course, which was really just some simple HTML and JavaScript tutorials. After that I took some slightly more sophisticated web development classes at the local community college half the day while still in high school. The work I had done with development was interesting, but I had a desire to learn about actual design so following high school I enrolled in a visual communications program.

Steven: I was introduced to web design in 2002 when I took a course in college. During that semester we learned the basics of HTML to the point that we could build a basic website. It was a very low level web design course (we didn't even learn anything about CSS), but it helped to build a foundation of knowledge on the basics of HTML. Following that class I continued learning through books and online tutorials.

Q. What is the single most important attribute/skill a good web designer must have?

Wolfgang: A good web designer needs to have both an eye for detail and for the whole thing. Meaning that he always has to be aware of the major goal and target group of the site, while still focusing on small details, such as nicely designed forms etc.

Anthony: Often times the term web designer is used when the job seeker really is looking for a web developer, which has led to a large number of professionals who really do not know design theory. Learning design theory, typography, and design history is an absolute must for any web designer who really strives to be great.

Steven: In my opinion, the most important attribute is to have a desire for continual learning and development. Technology and trends change so quickly that even if you have developed strong skills, you'll be left behind if you do not continue to grow. There are always new things to learn and plenty of room for improvement.

Q. What hard and soft skills should a web designer have? Should he/she have a degree or can you be self taught?

Wolfgang: First and probably most important: a web designer has to be good at listening to clients. Understanding the customer's needs and expectations will speed up and improve the quality of your work drastically. Besides that you have to have decent understanding of usability guidelines and patterns, good knowledge of CSS/XHTML and Javascript and last but not least a sense of aesthetics.

While it's good to have some sort of academic background, I don't think that it's necessary. I know many designers, me included, that are mostly self taught& and of course still self teaching. That's an ongoing progress!

Anthony: Aside from knowledge of design theory, a web designer should also have at least a functional knowledge of web development. Web design is so dependant on knowing technical constraints that having a firm grasp of what is possible is a must.

The debate over whether you should have a degree to practice design is far larger that I would like to try and tackle in my response, however I do believe that there is something to be gained from learning in a group environment from an experienced practitioner. Design can be very subjective, and learning how to create and spot great design is in my opinion best learned in a collaborative environment. I do believe that it is possible to learn on your own, but you may be missing out on some great insight in the process.

Steven: It's hard for me to say someone should have a degree when I don't have one myself. If you look at the top web designers and developers you'll see a good mix of people who have formal education and those who are self taught. I think it's certainly beneficial to have a degree, and I wish I had more formal training in design and development, but there is still the need to keep learning on your own.

Q. Your opinion on Fixed Width versus Fluid Design

Wolfgang: Both fixed and fluid layouts have their advantages and it depends a bit on the type and on the content of the site which one to choose. In my opinion corporate websites, blogs or simple one-pager (e.g. iPhone app website etc.) tend to work better with a fixed layout, because you have more control over the style of text and images. Moreover text is easier to read if there are just about 50 to 60 characters per line. A shopping site for instance (e.g. Amazon) may work better with a fluid layout.

Anthony: Fixed in the large majority of circumstances (95%), however there are times when fluid is appropriate. However, whenever fluid is being used min and max widths are a must. Reading extremely long lines of text is just plain annoying.

Steven: My opinion is that the fixed or fluid decision should be made on a case by case basis. Most of the work I do is fixed width, and that is what I prefer for my personal projects. Most of the clients I have had also prefer fixed width designs because of the greater consistency of the design.

Q. EMS, percentage, pixels or points?

Wolfgang: If you had asked me this question one or two years ago, I would have answered that it's best to stick to percentages and EMs. On the one hand to make the site look acceptable even after changing font size, and on the other to make IE6 resize text at all :)

However now that the major browsers (IE7+, Firefox3+ and Safari3+) changed their default way of resizing content (they now resize both text and images) I tend to going back to pixels. It's the more natural unit for pixel based displays. I don't use points at all& except when doing print stylesheets.

Anthony: Pixels, they have the greatest amount of accuracy cross-browser. With document zooming being pretty much standard in all modern browsers other units of measurement are just more confusing to use, and far more complicated when trying to set type on a consistent baseline grid.

Steven: I generally use pixels for layouts. For text sizing I'll typically set the body text to a percentage and size the specific text elements in ems.

Q. What tools are a must have in a good web designer's arsenal?

Wolfgang: A good text editor. Don't rely on a WYSIWYG editor, because most of them produce crappy markup and you don't really get a "feeling" for how things work. And secondly, a tool to do decent graphics. I prefer doing most of my work in Photoshop, but you may have your own favorite tools :)

Anthony: I couldnt work without a sketchbook of some kind, a computer, and creative suite. jQuery is also pretty useful but I wouldnt call it an absolute necessity.

Steven: Photoshop would be the tool that I would consider the most important to me. For coding, there are a lot of editors out there and so I wouldn't classify any of them individually as a must have, it's more of a personal choice as to which one(s) you prefer.

Q. Any advice to budding and beginning web designers?

Wolfgang: Browse the web, get inspired. If you see anything nice, startup Firebug and look how it's implemented. Try to do something similar in your next project. But keep in mind: don't steal someone's else's code or design.

Anthony: Learn about design theory. Pick up books about print design and learn how you can apply the theories to the web in an appropriate way. Also, look for inspiration outside of the design showcase galleries. These galleries can be great resources but they showcase trends, and trends end. Instead strive for work that is timeless and meets client goals, looking amazing is only half of the design equation.

Steven: Focus on improving your skills and getting experience. You can work on personal projects of your own or pick up work from friends and family if you're not ready to start doing client work that will bring more pressure. Freelancing part-time is a great way to develop your skills without the pressure of giving up a stable income from a full-time job.

We have come to the the end of our discussion, here are some key points not to forget..

A good designer has a keen eye for detail and a desire to continually learn and improve
Whether you have a formal degree or not, continuing to learn is the key for success
Fixed Width is the way to go in majority of circumstances
Pixels is an unanimous favorite
Photoshop + text editor + sketchpad are the key tools of a good designer
Learn, learn and continue to learn

Our thanks to Wolfgang, Anthony and Steven for taking the time to share their wisdom and thoughts. Its a privilege and a pleasure to host them on OdinJobs.

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Did you know that there are 309 Linux Distributions, as of today, being monitored by distrowatch.com and they do not even claim to track nearly all the flavors out there?

According to distrowatch, "A Linux distribution is like a religion. If you've ever tried to suggest to another person that his or her choice of a distro might not be the best, then you know what I mean."

There are so many flavors/distributions because, anyone with a little time on their hands can create a distribution.This is a problem or not, depending on where you are coming from. Are you looking to tinker on your computer in your basement or are you going to look for a job as a Linux Administrator/Linux Developer? If you are looking for a Linux job then you better know the in-demand distros.

There are a lot of very good articles going into the technical merits, features of each distribution and that is not the point of this analysis. (see How to choose the best Linux distro for you, 5 Ways to Decide on a Linux Distribution etc). This analysis is to find which Linux distribution/s are being adopted in the corporate world and if you are looking at Linux as a job/career, what would you make.

Linux Flavors included in this analysis: BSD, centOS, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu.

Methodology: Use OdinJobs the largest technology job search engine to look at the demand and median salary for each of these over 2008 and 2009.

On the right, an average job demand was looked up for 2008 & 2009 for each of the distribution analyzed. More than 80% of the demand is for RedHat, BSD and Suse. (Aside point: The name Mandriva, what was originally Mandrake has not caught on. There was not a single position that used the new term. Mandrake however was still used and had an average demand of about 10 jobs a month). RedHat at 3000, is more than double that of BSD (800), and Suse (550). centOs(200), Debian(300), Fedora(225), and Ubunt(175) were the center of the pack. Gentoo (60) finished last.

(If you have a favorite Linux distribution and want to check its demand, go to Market Statistics and type in your distribution.)

Here is a monthly demand for RedHat for 2008 - 2009


Generated By: OdinJobs - IT Jobs and Technology Job Search Engine

The important thing to note here, is that demand for RedHat after falling big time in Nov & Dec of 2008 has come back in Feb 2009 to the 2008 levels and is doing a little better this year compared to last year. This pattern is being seen across most of IT.

So, how does the top 3 most popular Linux distributions compare in median salary offered.

Salary Comparison for a Linux Administrator


Generated By: OdinJobs - IT Jobs and Technology Job Search Engine

Salary Comparison for a Linux Developer


Generated By: OdinJobs - IT Jobs and Technology Job Search Engine

A linux administrator is a linux administrator, there is no difference if you are managing RedHat, Suse or BSD. However, a Suse developer gets a premium compared to a RedHat or BSD developer. Why, any ideas?

Conclusion

All the different distributions are great, it gives a geek complete freedom to hack and experiment, but if you want a job in the corporate world, you would fare better if you are familiar with RedHat, Suse or BSD, more RedHat than the others and if you are a developer Suse provides the best bang for earning big bucks.

See the latest opportunities for Linux: Linux Jobs

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