Questions from my sister
About web design, not anything meaningful.
My sister is interested in web design/development and she recently sent me a bunch of questions about my experience. It struck me as good content so here it is.
You’re a front end, right?
Mostly, but I also do a lot of templating. Depends on the platform that’s used for the site. My PHP knowledge is pretty limited at this point so I don’t do much back end work on WordPress. But I’m pretty well-versed in Handlebars and Twig (those count as back end, right?).
Do you have to know Javascript?
You can build a perfectly good website without coding anything by using tools like Squarespace or Wordpress plugins. You only need to code in order to customize things. I’d say the most important language to learn first is CSS. It’s needed for the most basic front end customization, but it’s also powerful enough to achieve almost any custom formatting or interaction. I got by for a long time by simply looking up Javascript snippets for specific problems and by doing that I got to where I could modify existing scripts and eventually create my own scripts from scratch.
Side note: I feel like CSS is pretty underappreciated, probably because a lot of people (myself included in many ways) only have a superficial understanding of it. I’ve seen things done with Javascript that would’ve been best accomplished with CSS. Pretty much all formatting (and these days most interactions too) can be done with CSS alone. It might take a little digging and creative thinking, but the performance advantage is worth it.
Do you use Photoshop a lot?
Yes, but not Photoshop. I use Affinity Designer, which is basically Adobe Illustrator but way cheaper. I also use Affinity Photo occasionally, that’s their version of Photoshop.
Do you sketch for your work?
I only sketch by hand for logo design, which is a very small part of my work. For websites I do all the design in Affinity Designer. For some sites I’ll mock up the whole site, for other sites I’ll only do a few key pages or even just the home page. It all depends on the project — what platform is being used to build the site, how much customization is needed, and to be honest how much I’m being paid. For sites where I only mock up a few pages, I’ll use those pages as inspiration or style guides for other pages as I build them.
But this is just what I do. Some people don’t do any design before hand and jump right into building, some people design every single page for every single site they work on.
Do you ever need a cheat sheet for units? Like how many pixels equal an em and stuff like that?
CSS units are confusing AF. To anyone. It’s not important to always know exactly how many pixels a certain number of ems equals. It’s much more important to know how the different units work (absolute vs relative units, and what the relative units are relative to) so you can know when to use what unit. The latter is something you learn with experience so don’t worry about trying to understand everything when you read about it. No matter what, I always end up doing a lot of trial and error when it comes to sizing things.
I’ve read that to be a web designer you need to know all about UX, is that true?
UX is a trendy word right now, but the main goal in website UX design is to simply make a website that’s easy to use. I don’t mean to belittle UX or oversimplify it — it can get a lot more nuanced and it’s possible to take things a step further and make a website that’s delightful to use — but in general a good website just needs to direct people to important content and be easy to navigate. And there’s no magic to that. I’ve been reading a book about it and it’s pretty much all common sense stuff. The problem is that UX often gets forgotten due to all the other aspects of designing and building a website.
I’ve also read that communication is key. You have to effectively communicate your ideas.
Yes. This is definitely true. Communicating effectively is a must whether you’re talking to your boss, your client, or your co-workers and teammates. As a freelancer it’s especially important to be able to communicate clearly through writing — emails, instant messages, etc. That can be especially challenging when discussing abstract or complex things like aesthetic design and website architecture. And communicating with clients often requires a lot of tact, which is a whole different skill. So yes, communication is key. But don’t let that keep you from trying. Everyone makes mistakes when it comes to this, you just have to learn from them and keep moving.
