Member Avatar for Pablo149

Hello everyone,
I am in the process of breaking into the web design field, and there's something that has me puzzled. In most areas of IT, there is usually some sort of certification involved; it might not be "necessary", but its extremely helpful to have. For example, if you want to get work as a PC technician, having an A+ cert usually gives you a leg up. I am wondering, is there anything similar for website design? I only ask because Ihave tried searching for something along those lines, and I'm getting strictly nowhere

cheers,
Pablo

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by AleMonteiro
Member Avatar for AleMonteiro

Certifications may help but I don't think they are essential at all.

What gives you credit on the web is what you have done for the web.
If you have a beautiful and fufilling portfolio it will be credit enough.

Of course that a pretty portfolio doesn't mean much if your clients and users complain about you and don't give good recommendations.

If you are starting, get a few small jobs with your friends and acquainteds. Don't charge much, in the begning it's more important to get experience and portfolio.

Good luck.

Member Avatar for dany4ev_1

I agree with Ale. One is needed to establish a reputation of deliverable designs. You can start off by doing some free lance projects for your fellow students, colleagues and some minor projects for real clients once you are able to do these and decide how to handle various usability issues well enough you'll be able to step in as qualified web designer. Of course skills in one or more of those graphic tools like photoshop, ilustrator, some html & css knowledge, and of course you need to know about jquery & javascript too this is necessary too in my opinion.

Member Avatar for Pablo149

Thank you Ale and Dany; this is actually very encouraging. I already know a good deal about HTML and css, and a certain limited amount of experience with JavaScript. I enjoy learning about this, and really don't need an instructor or a formal setting to do so.

I am wondering though, besides building sites for friends and family, are their place online where you can demo your talent? I'm already signing up for Thumbtack, but I was wondering if either of you had any other suggestions?

Member Avatar for mattster

w3schools go a great set of certifications, but as mentioned, by no means essential to work.

Instead of Thumbstack, envato makes a forturne for its authors and developers.

Member Avatar for AleMonteiro

Envato is really nice, I never published anything, but I bought a pretty Adobe After Effects template and a great song to go in the background. Works wonders.

About w3schools certification, I'd say it's nice to test yourself. I got 96% in JavaScript and got really excited about it =)

commented: nice one! +4
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