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Design

Posted by Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

Design skills with Coding

Hi guys,

While I am currently working on my portfolio project, some of you might have probably amazing skills in coding to create sites, here's questions - what would you do if your customers' requirements on design appearances or improving your own site if your skills are limited to front+back end skills only without designing stuffs. Can you do that as individual, not someone else (designer)?

Looking forward to hear from you soon.

3 Answers

Tyler Dix
Tyler Dix
14,230 Points
Tyler Dix
Tyler Dix
14,230 Points

Yes, you can. I recommend taking the Web Design track, as it's very thorough. From my experience, when developing a website you'll need three distinct talents:

  1. Web designer
  2. Front-end web developer
  3. Back-end web developer

I'm most interested in #1, because I like HTML, CSS, Adobe software, and paying attention to aesthetics such as font-type, letter-spacing, color, spacing between different elements on a web page, etc.

The primary (and most confusing) difference between a web designer and front-end web developer is that front-end web devs are very good with JavaScript and various JS libraries like jQuery.

So the short answer is yes. But this depends on how much time/dedication/interest you have. I recommend sticking to what tickles your fancy as you'll have native interest and be more likely to produce outstanding work. If web design doesn't excite you (like back-end web development doesn't excite me too much), then hire out a contractor or connect with web designers in your community.

It is absolutely common to have multiple skill sets and people working on one site, depending on the site's complexity. I recently hired a contractor to help with backend stuff on a very simple site because I haven't gotten around to learning PHP and WordPress.

Hope this helps,

Tyler

Salman Akram
PLUS
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points
Salman Akram
Salman Akram
Courses Plus Student 40,065 Points

Thank you Tyler, it makes sense. I mostly focus on front-end development and feel confident, however, I do have some skills on Adobe Illustrator but not fancy things on everything, I will see what customers' requirements that make us a bit nervous.

Tyler Dix
Tyler Dix
14,230 Points
Tyler Dix
Tyler Dix
14,230 Points

No problem Salman. Please vote up if you found this useful (I need so many up-votes for a program I'm in).

Thanks, and good luck with that site. As I'm sure you know, there are TONS of resources on this site and elsewhere on the web.