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Getting your first web design client and your web design portfolio. – Killersites Web Design Magazine

Killersites Web Design Magazine

Getting your first web design client and your web design portfolio.

In the following session, I outline what you need to have on your web design business web site. So we are talking about contact phone numbers, examples of your previous work etc…

For many though, since they are just starting out, they may have no commercial work to show – no worries, I provide you with a couple of strategies to make up for that.

Finally, I also get into how you can land your very first web design client.

Stefan Mischook

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9 responses to “Getting your first web design client and your web design portfolio.”

  1. Stefan–Many thanks for your DW tutorials. I
    am an absolute beginner w/ DW with a
    “learning cliff” so I am as overwhelmed as I
    am enthusiastic. However, I want to learn web
    standards DW craft from the gitgo. So do I
    skip learning tables, etc? Your CSS tutorials
    are great but I don’t get it yet. Would learning
    to use CSS within DW be a good strategy? I am
    looking forward to the next set of DW ‘s. Any
    suggestions about resources?

  2. Hi,

    If you are trying to get your head wrapped around CSS, you are better off sticking with code only for now.

    Have you seen my CSS tutorial site: http://www.csstutorial.net

    .. Therein you will learn the basics of CSS.

    PS: I will have new Dreamweaver video tutorials coming out very, very soon. But I’m going to concentrate on the soon to be released CS4.

    Thanks for writing.

    Stefan

  3. Great session by the way. And I agree, Martin – Dreamweaver as all editors should only be used in the code editor until you get to become a more advanced user. It seems counter intuitive to say only advanced users should utilize the WYSIWYG editor, but they know enough on how to tweak Dreamweaver to output the code that they are looking for and more importantly how to quickly fix the code Dreamweaver outputs.

    Cement your feet in CSS and the world is your oyster. =)

    Cheers
    Mike

  4. Hey Stefan..
    There is quite a bit of information out there on web design and quite a few directions to take. Is there a step by step flow that would be advisable for learning web development? I find I get redirected quite a bit. I started with HTML, went to CSS, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator back to Dreamweaver, played with Flash, back to Dreamweaver…Do you have a recommended route for what’s most important?

    Thanks,
    Kenww

  5. Hi Kenww,

    You should figure out what direction you want to go in … either a designer or developer.

    Designers concentrate on making the pages looks good and organizing the information to suit the websites business needs. If that is what you are interested in, then I would look at usability and design theory.

    Developer is just another name for programmer. If you decide that you prefer working on the code and you want to get into creating web based software, then you might want to look at PHP next:

    http://www.killerphp.com

    Either way is noble, it comes down to taste. That said, I still believe everyone should learn just a little PHP.

    … It’s a good tool to have in your back pocket.

    Stefan

  6. Thanks Stefan.
    One more thing…Are Flash sites somewhat stand alone separate from html/CSS based sites? I mean, if your a flash designer, you could use flash as your sole design tool?

    Ken

  7. Some people use Flash and only Flash, but that is not the norm.

    Typically Flash components are used within the context of an HTML page to add some extra … flash.

    😉

    That said, there is a whole specialization in web design that is centered around building Flash based sites and software. Adobe is really pushing this hard with Flex and other tools that turns Flash from being a web animation software to a web application solution.

    Hope that helps.

    Stefan

  8. I’m just starting up a web design business.
    On the Flash front, I love Flash for entire site design, but does that mean I’ll never be able to provide a client with a site they can update?
    Will I lose clients because they will all want to manage their own site?
    Do I have to learn how to do html sites? I don’t like most of them!

  9. If the entire site is designed in Flash, then it will be hard to make it editable by the client unless they know Flash.

    … UNLESS, you load all the text for the site with text files. This would allow your client to pop up the external text files and make changes to the content that way. This of course would only allow them to change the text content.

    “Will I lose clients because they will all want to manage their own site?”

    That depends on the clients!

    Should you learn HTML?

    I would strongly suggest you learn HTML because building sites completely in Flash does present a lot of problems and is generally not a good idea.

    My HTML and CSS videos: http://www.killersites.com/web-design/

    … Even Adobe does not have their web sites built all in Flash. They use a lot of standard HTML pages.

    Stefan