What are Key Skills to become a Web Designer?
Being a web designer is one of the most lucrative career opportunities in today’s world. It requires a combination of technical skills such as designs, typography, color theory, and the like, as well as non-technical skills such as collaboration and communication.
Let us take a look at some of the key skills for a web designer:
Required Skills for Web Designers
Knowing the basic principles of designing: This includes web designer skills such as reification, invariance, and emergence. Such skills are often innate and based on creative ability. However, knowing the fundamentals of design can prove to be extremely beneficial for web designers.
Typography: As a web designer, it is essential to understand that typography, in general, makes a huge difference to your website. The geometry and weight of each type are crucial in determining its visibility and visual aesthetic.
One of the key skills of a web designer is to know and understand the differences between the different font styles and where they must be used.
Composition: Having all the key web design skills may prove to be immaterial if you do not possess the knowledge of ideal composition.
The visuals, text, and other elements must be arranged in such a way that is visually pleasing and useful at the same time. The important content must grab the readers’ attention, and the overall composition of the website must portray the hierarchy of ideas.
Software used for Designing: There is numerous software that can be used for web designing. However, it is important to choose software that fits your budget and your specific needs. One of the most important web design skills is to have a good grasp of editing software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma, and the like.
There are many free software such as Gimp and Inkscape for those on a budget. Along with designing skills, animation software is also needed to add an element of surprise and pizzazz to your design.
Content Management Software: It is imperative to understand and possess the technical know-how of operating a content management system, especially for websites that need regular content updates. This makes the process of content management easier and less cumbersome.
User Experience (UX): This web designer skill helps web designers to determine the emotional responses of the readers to the design and overall utility of the website. The objective is to give a good experience to those who visit your website by engaging the audience and guiding them. Clear layouts, logically placed content, humanistic designs, and audience-specific designs are some of the best UX practices.
User Interface (UI): User Interface is one of the key skills of a web designer. By focusing on specificity, UI influences different aspects of usability, such as clear and straightforward interfaces, intuitive actions, easy navigation elements, and the like.
Business Strategy: While it is true that web designers are not expected to possess expert-level knowledge of business strategies, knowing how your design can cater to the business needs of your client is an essential skill for a web designer. This helps designers to meet the individual business needs of each client.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It is imperative to possess good SEO skills to create content that is searchable on the internet. It is an important aspect of developing the content of the websites and helps in increasing the reach of your website.
Patience and Communication: These are some non-technical key skills of a web designer. Designing a website requires tons of patience and hard work to deliver products that suit the clients’ needs.
More often than never, clients are hard to please, and it requires lots of patience and good communication skills to have clarity about the specific needs of the client in question.
These are some of the important skills that a web designer must possess in today’s world. The competition has increased at manifold rates in the web-designing industry, and as a web designer, you have to stay at the top of your game to be successful in this realm.
How to Improve Your Web Designer Skills?
Having discussed the important skills necessary for a web designer, let’s take a look at ways in which these skills can be improved constantly. Here are a few tips on how to learn and master the important skills of a web designer:
Online learning Courses: Everyone who aspires to learn web designing does not have physical access to institutions teaching the course. In such a situation, online web designing courses prove to be very helpful. These courses provide appropriate certification upon completion as well. The certificate increases your chances of employability in the industry and is, therefore, of prime importance. You can find the best web design courses at DAN Institute.
Learning web design from books: Numerous books can help you to study web designing right from the comfort of your home. These books provide a clear understanding of the basic concepts of web designing. Different books suited to different levels of proficiency are available in the market. Some popular options include “Designing with Web Standards,” “Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide,” “Learning How to Make Web Pages Functional,” and the like.
Follow web designing blogs: Following well-known web designing blogs can greatly help web designers to stay updated with their skills. Such blogs give an idea about the trending ideas in the web designing field. Some web designing blogs to look out for including Webdesignledger, Mockplus blog, Smashing Magazine, Webdesigner Depot, etc.
Learn Coding Online: There are numerous online courses online and self-help books that can help you learn basic coding languages such as HTML and CSS. Some learning websites for coding include Google Code University, Code Avengers, and W3Schools.
It is important to always stay up-to-date with important web designing skills. The aforementioned tips can prove to be extremely helpful for those who aspire to succeed in the field of web designing.
How to Demonstrate Your Web Designer Skills?
Now that we know how to acquire some great web designing skills, it is important to understand how these skills can be proved to employers or clients. Here are a few tips to prove your great web designing skills to employers.
Social Media: In today’s world, social media is one of the most effective places to market your web designing skills. Employers are always on the lookout for fresh and interesting talent on social media. Showcase your talents, share your expertise, and brand yourself on social media in such a manner that employers or potential clients are automatically drawn to working with you. Maintaining social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram, is of prime importance if you want to be noticed in the industry.
Create a killer landing page for your website: The landing page is the first thing the employer is going to notice when they visit your profile. Make sure that the landing page is as perfect as it can be and simple to navigate through. The landing page must have shortcuts to some of your best web design portfolios. Also, mention important and relevant information on your website and keep sharing your landing page and design portfolios via your social media handles.
Find your target audience: It has been proved that having a well-defined group of audiences and clients can help web designers to get noticed easily. When a web designer makes his or her services industry-specific, employers from that particular industry are more likely to employ him or her instead of some generic web designer. Becoming a specialist in particular industries is far more beneficial than being a generic web designer. This also helps you to become an expert in the chosen industry and consequently increases your chances of being employed in that particular industry in the future.
Consider quality freelance marketplaces: Freelance marketplaces such as AwesomeWeb, Toptal, and Behance are excellent platforms to find and display your skills to potential employers. These marketplaces focus primarily on the quality of work and often bring big clients to web designers with proven skills. Each of these marketplaces has its unique set of clients, and the type of designs needed by these marketplaces also vary. So, make sure to choose a freelance marketplace that suits your skillset and area of interest. You can charge the deserved rates on these platforms as well.
Web designing is an industry that is essential for the survival of all other industries. This is because the branding and marketing of almost all industries take place using online websites.
Every big company in any industry is always competing with fellow companies to develop a better website in order to attract customers or visitors. Learning web design can prove to be extremely beneficial in this scenario. Keep learning and sharpening your web designer skills every day to reach the zenith of success and glory.
