Should I go to school to be a web designer?

February 6, 2006 12:08 PM

CareerAdviceFilter: How necessary is official education to work in web design?

I have a degree in CompSci, and have spent the last three years in dead-end jobs that don't use my degree. I've been teaching myself some web design over this time, and did a couple of sites in my spare time.

I'm losing my latest dead-end job, and am now at a cross roads. I have some money saved up, so I could take some time off and improve my portfolio. Or I can go to school.

Most of the local schools' web design programs are hopelessly out of date, (I know one is still teaching < font> tags) and are 95% stuff I already know. I've found one that looks promising, but it is correspondingly more expensive.

For this kind of field, a solid portfolio is probably more important than another piece of paper, and if I can put that together on my own instead of at school, I won't be in debt at the end of it. But I wouldn't even be considering school if I didn't think I'd learn one or two things from it.

So, would school be worth the extra expense?

posted by RobotHero to work & money (16 comments total)

No.

It's all about the portfolio, nobody gives a damn where or if you went to school.
posted by ook at 12:16 PM on February 6, 2006

No. Build yourself a portfolio of spec-work, shop it around, and get yourself a job. It was easier to do this in the late 90's, sure, but it's still possible. Web design (on the HTML/Javascript/Flash sort of end of things) is more about what you can do than what your education is.
posted by kaseijin at 12:17 PM on February 6, 2006

Unless, of course, you want to get into site design and content management/information architecture. Were you to get an Master's in Library and Information Science, you'd be emminently employable as an IA. A bunch of my colleagues in library school started out as coders or web developers and are now working as IAs.

This does not, of course, mean that this is the only way to go and I don't know if you've any desire to accumulate more debt, but it bears consideration.

Check out The American Society for Information Science and Technology to see if you might be interested in going this route.
posted by stet at 12:23 PM on February 6, 2006

You could try a sort of halfway solution between doing it completely on your own and getting a degree: a short-term certificate program. I think the contacts you would make (professors, vendors, fellow students) might be worth the expense.

DePaul University has such a program.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 12:43 PM on February 6, 2006

Build some sites, read up on web-related topics that interest you, and show a genuine enthusiasm for the web and you'll be far more employable than the hordes of hopeless muppets out there.

(I don't give a toss about qualifications when interviewing people for web developer positions, but I'm always somewhat wary of anyone who doesn't have their own web site or can't instantly reel off a list of sites they read regularly)
posted by malevolent at 12:56 PM on February 6, 2006

CareerAdviceFilter: How necessary is official education to work in web design?

None.

Most of the local schools' web design programs are hopelessly out of date.

Yes.

For this kind of field, a solid portfolio is probably more important than another piece of paper

Yes.

So, would school be worth the extra expense?

No.
posted by frogan at 1:06 PM on February 6, 2006

Another no for school. Good designers rely on talent; if you have to go to school to get it, as they say, you ain't got it.

Get that portfolio looking all shiny. It's all employers care about.
posted by BorgLove at 1:17 PM on February 6, 2006

Okay. I guess the follow-up question is, then, who should I be reading?

I've got a few feeds on my computer, A List Apart and SimpleBits are the first that come to mind. I used to read the Daily Sucker, but you keep seeing the same mistakes over and over again, so it isn't that educational.

I'm starting to teach myself to use Drupal, so I'm reading some related forums and blogs.

What else do you read to keep up?
posted by RobotHero at 1:34 PM on February 6, 2006

I have a BA in English, and I've been working in the Web Development and Design market for over 10 years now. So, to add my voice to the fires: No. They look primarily at your resume, and your education requirement pretty much defaults to "Did you graduate college? Good."
posted by thanotopsis at 1:51 PM on February 6, 2006

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there is probably an excellent course of study for this, I just have no idea whether it exists yet or who offers it if it does.

Traditional print media design is excellent for conveying information; industrial product design is going to have an emphasis on human interfaces and interaction. A combination of these disciplines is going to be a million times more effective than anything else since implementation (applications, HTML, CSS) will change over the years. An excellent design should be implementable independent of language and a good cirriculum will only teach the basics and expect you to pick up the technical details on your own.

I come from a Computer Science background though, so you might want to take my words with a grain of salt. It took me a while but I've become a proponent of "here's the theory, now use your technical skills to apply it."
posted by mikeh at 1:54 PM on February 6, 2006

Mikeh: I've thought exactly the same thing; I wonder if something like stet's idea of Library Sciences is what we're thinking of. I have a comp sci background, too, so maybe you're just confirming my biases.
posted by RobotHero at 2:09 PM on February 6, 2006

You don't need formal traning, and besides you already have a CS degree.

I might look into taking some art and graphic design classes though, that would be much, much more useful for you.
posted by delmoi at 3:42 PM on February 6, 2006

What kind of webwork do you really like?

Splashy marketing? Brush up on your art skills and study traditional advertising for ideas and a sense of how ad agencies approach things.

Entertainment? Learn cutting edge new media, flash, etc.

Information-heavy? Get yer IA on.

Search-engine monster? Learn how to make SEO-friendly designs and markup and hopefully not lose your soul in the process.

Web apps? Become a programmer's friend. Learn new technologies such as ajax, if that floats your boat.

Government/non-profit? Become an accessibility and standards champion. (Everyone should be one, though.)

Chances are, you'll be doing a little of all of this, but I'm sure you'll be able to carve a niche for yourself if your skills are really heavy in one area.

Your comp sci background will make you a big friend of web programmers.^* In my shop, the only designers who are allowed to work on the big database driven, modular stuff are those who have a good grasp on how programming works. This type of work requires less "fine art" skills, but a high degree of IA skills.

If you can communicate your ideas in pseudo-code, your programmers will love you. And even more bonus points if your markup is in such a way that compliments their loop statements and such.

FWIW, I've been a web designer (should be a full project manager soon) for about 7 years now. My degree is in music performance, but I took enough comp sci and basic programming to be able to establish a good rapport with my programming teams.

* In my shop, a designer does the look and feel, plus all the HTML/CSS. A programmer then adds in the SQL and ASP fun. Many other shops are like this. Some split up the designer into 2 roles: "look and feel" and markup producer.
posted by Sangre Azul at 4:29 PM on February 6, 2006

When I did this daily, I was a graphic designer who did all of the HTML/CSS and some Javascript, all Actionscript and some ColdFusion. So, I have some sense of the various phases of a project.

If you are looking for a degree in the technical side of things, I would say that that would be less than useful. Good shops tend to know that university cs departments tend to be out-of-date. At least they were where I was. In 1998, the best way to learn how to do Web apps was to do them. Use forums and books.

If you are looking to do the visual end of things, then yes, an education will help quite a bit in two ways. One, you don't have quite the same background as you do for Web apps. Two, the knowledge for design is less objective and therefore less translatable to books or Web forums. In other words, it's a bit less facts-based than "how do I do an array in PHP?" Three (it's the new two!), contacts and networking here are surprisingly important (particularly if you'd like to work at an ad agency). Since you already have a CS degree, if you wanted to be a graphic designer, I'd suggest finding a decent school near you and take one-to-two classes at a time, part-time. I say this last bit as someone who did professional graphic design for five years in Kentucky and Detroit and is now working on a MFA which I've found to be quite useful. I know, however, that others' mileages have varied!
posted by Slothrop at 6:05 PM on February 6, 2006

i'm chiming in to say that if you want to do web design for reputable creative agencies you will need a degree in the fine arts before they will seriously consider letting you make pretty things for the big clients.

this is my experience in the Seattle area. YMMV. Good luck and keep at it!
posted by macinchik at 3:14 PM on February 7, 2006

By itself, formal education in "web design" is useless, unless it's at an advertising art school, or some such.

Most so-called programmers now-a-days are (at best) mediocre web page jockeys with a little experience building controls or making the occasional database call.

Focus on building a portfolio and a corresponding presentation that includes any infrastructure skills you may have.

The proof is in the pudding, and if you can show a potential client real (or even conceptual) work, you're set. As long as your work is good.
posted by mumeishi at 10:26 AM on February 9, 2006