Member Avatar for YOLO87

Hi guys, I can really use some advice about becoming a web designer. At the moment I'm currently sharpening my skills.

What I would like to know is how a typical Web Designer works over a day and a project.

I'm assuming after you received the initial design, during the development stage:

  1. You visualise the initial design, by creating the html frame, is this hand coded or done in WYSIWYG editor?
  2. Then, create/optimise graphics in Photoshop.
  3. Layout the objects with CSS, again, is it hand coded or done by WYSIWYG editor?
  4. Then code the front end functionality through JS.
  5. Design and code the database through MySQl.
  6. Add backend functionality.

Any advice would be grateful, best practices, time management - basically, how likely its done in the real world. Any books and links would also be cool.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by EvolutionFallen
Member Avatar for slavica.k

Webmatrix and visual studio will do basick html structure for you, (like head and body)but css you have to write yourself.

Member Avatar for EvolutionFallen

Good topic. I haven't worked on too many big "from scratch" projects so I'm looking forward to some interesting responses here.
For me, the first item is figuring out what the project is about, and if there's a cost-effective platform out there that I can use as a framework. This way I don't have to reinvent the wheel; oftentimes it's easy for the client to learn to use, and they're happy 'cause they don't have to pay me for a custom CMS. WordPress has often been my weapon of choice. I'm also trying to learn CakePHP.
If the project DOES have to be from scratch, I'd actually say that the database is one of the first things I'll work on. You need to know what kind of information you want to store and relay before you can decide how you want to present it. Plus I think this helps because while you're already building the DB you can insert dummy content for testing later on. If the client already has the schema figured out and has provided you with a site design based on it, awesome.

Once I have the design I prefer to break it down into its HTML structure. I usually do this by hand-coding. This way I'm very familiar with the elements I may need to reference in CSS and JS. Then yes, slice and dice in PS and start figuring out your CSS. Again, I prefer hand-coding.

For the rest I'd say you're pretty spot on with what I do.

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