The web today is a far cry from what was originally proposed in the late 80s.

An original webpage consisted of only text,

and there was essentially no design involved.

But the web we know today has evolved into something much more.

Websites now aren't just pages on a global network.

They're complete experiences with rich and engaging content.

It's a fair assumption to say

that we're spending increasing amounts of time on the web,

and this number can only go up in the future.

Creating and maintaining the design of a great web experience

is a task handled by a web designer.

Web design is a vast topic that encompasses

many different skills and disciplines

in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment.

As a web designer you need to have knowledge of topics

ranging from color theory, typography, and user interaction on the design side

as well as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the technology side.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You will also have to keep up with methodologies

that are a part of this trade—

things like responsive web design.

Now while this might seem daunting

web design is a very engaging, interesting, and rewarding field.

Now sometimes you might see this position listed as a front-end designer

or even a user-experience or user-interaction designer.

The tasks vary from position to position,

but they all encompass the same set of skills.

To get an idea of what it is like to start out in web design

let's talk to some of our teachers in the field.

[How did you get started in web design?]

Well I got started in web design by just making a personal homepage.

I was 11 years old, and I think I was using FrontPage at the time.

And I just posted all sorts of things that I was interested in at the time—

mostly video games.

From there I progressed to actually hand coding HTML and CSS.

I think I moved onto Dreamweaver at some point

and eventually just started using a text editor.

And then—at some point—I started learning back-end coding

so I started learning PHP—I think around the time I was graduating high school

or going into college.

And I just taught myself out of books from the college library.

Then I moved on to Ruby on Rails—

got an internship and—kind of just—

progressed from there in the professional world.

Well the way I got started in web design was at an early age.

My dad was a programmer, and my mom was a graphic designer.

So I—kind of—just always had the programs and the software

available to me to use.

And they—kind of—introduced it to me at a young age.

I didn't really start coding, though, until I was about 12 or 13

when there was a big diary boom—like the online diaries.

So like for Zenga and BloopDiary I would create custom layouts and stuff like that.

Well I got started in the industry around high school.

My parents came to me and they were like,

"You know all this stuff that you're doing in your free time

as a web designer—you know you can make a career out of that, right?"

And I was kind of surprised, or I just didn't know that

that was something that I could actually pursue as a career.

So I enrolled at the Art Institute of Tampa

and went to school for my Bachelor's degree,

and I ended up meeting my professor my sophomore year,

and he hired me.

I don't really think I had a beginning point of when I got started in design.

It was more of a transition.

I've done fine arts pretty much my whole life—

from painting, drawing, illustrating, creating stuff, sculptures.

And then when I originally went to college, I went for athletic fitness

because everybody thought it would be a good idea for me to go for art

and I didn't listen to them.

And then I did about 2 years of that,

and anatomy and physiology just wasn't working out for me.

So that's when I made the transition, and I got a degree in fine arts

and then transitioned that into a degree in multimedia design.

[What was your first experience like?]

I think—it was definitely a big shock the first time I worked in the industry

because unlike school where they give you a lot of perfect scenarios to work with

the perfect client, the perfect—you know—set up,

the perfect project—you get to do whatever you want—

it was a big shock to work for an agency where

you have clients and real-life work to do and on a timeline,

and you have a brand to work with.

So I think the shock of just having to track my time and

design not just for myself but for other people was the biggest shock for me.

My first professional experience actually programming websites

was in an internship that I got through my university.

It was actually Jim that convinced me that I should work at a company

rather than just trying to freelance.

At the time I was in college,

and it was a time where lots of big websites were popping up

like Facebook and YouTube, and I just naively thought

I was going to just make a website just like that

and retire a billionaire at age 30

and not really have anything to worry about.

Of course that didn't really pan out for me.

I did get an internship at a healthcare consulting firm,

and that turned out to be a really valuable experience for me.

I was programming PHP.

[What was your first work or project?]

Basically what the company did was they sent out

surveys to patients that were being discharged from hospitals

and then the patients would send those back—

this was all through the mail—

and we would write software that would process all of that data

and then deliver it back to the healthcare professionals

in the form of all types of graphs and interesting reports.

When I first started I was kind of an apprentice designer

so I would do a lot of the little stuff that my professor—my boss—

didn't have time to do

So I would make buttons and little call to actions and stuff like that.

A couple of the first clients I worked with was Outback

and some financial companies—a lot of healthcare companies and stuff like that.

And then the next step up was actually taking on entire projects on my own

so I would be responsible for the whole design of the email campaign

or the whole design of the website or whatever.

My first experience with designing in the industry

was with an agency called Infamous Graphics

also the Level Agency in Albany, New York.

At the time I was getting my Bachelor's degree,

and I had my Associate's in fine arts

and was basically helping out with print—large-format print and small-format print

and some logo design work.

[What skills do you need to work in the web design industry?]

I think the skills I needed to break into the web industry were

first the technical skills—

so I definitely needed to know HTML and CSS,

which I had a pretty firm grasp on at the time.

And, for me and my particular case,

it was really good to know a back-end language.

This was before Ruby on Rails started getting popular,

and PHP was the big back-end language at the time.

So I knew PHP—I built my own website in PHP

and it was actually a flyer board for my college.

So I was looking around campus and saw all of these paper flyer boards,

and I thought I could make a digital replacement for that.

And about 8 weeks after I launched, Facebook Marketplace came out

and basically crushed any hope of that idea succeeding.

But the good news is it helped me get a job—

I had something that I could actually show to an employer.

So not only did I have the skills, but I also had something in my portfolio

that I could use to actually demonstrate that I had those skills.

And the last thing—I think—was just having good oral communication skills.

When I worked in a group in high school or in college

I was usually the person that would—kind of—lead the group,

or pick up any slack, or take extra initiative,

or what have you, and that ended up being pretty valuable

in a job interview situation.

First and foremost you need to be a problem solver.

So you need to be able to recognize a problem and then offer a solution.

As far as technical skills go from a print standpoint,

Photoshop and Illustrator, both Raster and Vector Images.

And from a technical standpoint on web,

your basic HTML, CSS, and anything further than that

will definitely help you improve in the industry.

Color theory—aesthetics, being able to recognize good design from bad design

and appropriate design

are huge—are key to being a good designer.

I think that the most important thing as a designer

to break into the industry is good typography.

I was actually just having lunch with my old boss—my professor—

and he mentioned that the one thing that made me stand out from the other people

was my attention to typography.

So I didn't necessarily know the coding languages

or some of the other stuff could use a little bit of work,

but he saw that the kerning and the letting

and my treatment to type was good

so any good designer—the foundation to me is typography

and everything else can be taught.

Some of those things—to keep on moving up

you would need to learn some front-end languages

like HTML and CSS.

It really just depends on what kind of route you want to take—

whether it's a front-end developer route or a user interface designer.

But to me, typography is everything.

As a front-end designer the most important skill set

is probably just completely understanding typography

and hierarchy and color theory

and just being able to take content and break it up into a layout

that delivers the content the best.

And for a front-end developer it's so important to understand

those things like hierarchy, but it's more about the technologies

like HTML and CSS and the code and everything.

Typically places don't have—don't have a position for a user-experience designer,

but if they do that person would have to know how to create personas

and how to do user testing.

They would work closely with the designers and with the marketers

and bridge that gap for the client.

[How hard was it to learn these skills?]

You know—it's actually shocking how easy it is.

Web designers and developers are smart

but we're certainly not curing cancer or smashing atoms.

This is something that really anybody can learn how to do.

I think it's very much a skill that can be picked up just by practicing

just like art or music or any of the other applied arts.

I view web design and development as not necessarily a science

in terms of computer science.

I think it's the application of those tools.

So it's actually pretty easy

if you're willing to put in the time and effort to learn the skill.

Learning the technical skills of web design isn't as hard as you think it is.

The HTML and CSS—once you understand the format

and the layout of the languages

the rest of it comes naturally.

I personally feel that learning aesthetics and understanding good design

is a little bit harder for some people.

Personally I come from a design background so it wasn't that hard.

It transpires across the plane pretty much for everything

in the design world, but if you are coming from a DIV background

or don't understand design that well,

it might be a little bit harder for you to understand than it will—

HTML and CSS programming language.

Learning design skills I feel is more about

opening yourself up to good design and knowing what is good design,

understanding aesthetics—why things look good and why they are apprpriate

in certain environments.

Following designers in the industry that are successful

allowing them to almost mentor you but not directly

but show you good design.

And then it just catches on.

Like once you understand it and once you are able to critique work

and critique it solidly, it comes very easily.

What I feel is good design is a solid mixture

of the art and the content merging together

creating a seamless experience for the viewer.

[How do you keep up with the pace of the industry?]

I don't keep up with industry news in very traditional ways.

So—for example—I don't really read a whole lot of blogs.

I don't subscribe to RSS feeds.

I don't listen to a ton of podcasts.

Most of the news that I get is from social media.

So people I follow on Twitter and people I'm friends with on Facebook

will post articles, and I find that that's a really good way

to get a very relevant filter on the world.

Those people are people I trust,

and they usually bring the best articles to the surface.

So when somebody like Chris Coyier or Paul Irish

tweets an article, I'll definitely go ahead and read that.

Or if they say that, "You should really listen to this episode of this podcast."

I'll go ahead and tune in.

And even if I don't have time right then,

I'll save the article for later whether it's just by emailing it to myself

or using a tool like Instapaper,

and then I'll go back later on and actually go through those articles.

But I find that social media is actually a pretty good filter on the world.

It tends to just get you the most relevant things the fastest

rather than going through a popular blog or an RSS feed

and having to look through and find the relevant information for yourself.

It's very difficult to keep up with the pace of the industry

because things are changing all the time.

Luckily I—kind of—have a job where our job is to stay up on top of things

and to research, but I remember working at an agency

and just going to networking events all the time—

sharing what you know with other people,

following blogs and reading books,

just dedicating time each week to stay on top of that kind of stuff

because it will age you quickly if you don't.

So keeping up with the pace of the industry is very important

even nowadays because we have this while device-era going on

and everything is constantly changing.

So reading the latest blog posts of popular design blogs,

following professional designers on Twitter

and checking out their work and seeing what they're doing

is really important.

Hopefully those answers gave you a little insight

into what it is like starting out as a web designer

or thinking about starting out.

But for all that work you put in what are the rewards?

Well as a new entrant to this industry

you're looking at starting salaries of around $30,000 to $40,000.

On the high end with experience, a grasp of all the necessary technologies,

and the ability to lead teams,

you can earn upwards of $100,000.

Web design is—as the name states—design-oriented.

So if you have a background in art or design

and want to break into the tech industry,

this could be the career path for you.

Now art school isn't a prerequisite,

but the job is designing websites

so to reiterate what our teachers said

you should have a sound understanding of topics like

color theory, typography, design patterns, and aesthetics.

You should also know how to use software packages like

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

If this is what you're looking to start out with then don't worry.

We've got all the resources you need right here at Treehouse.