Not mentioned for a while: the house move. Things have gone a bit slower lately, but legally speaking it seems the process is almost done. So it’ll be happening real soon.
I wish I could be happier about it. It’s mostly a good thing. But this business of having to give up benefit and think in terms of how on earth I can earn money is really dragging me down. I’ve had ideas in theory, but in practice I feel totally frozen and pessimistic. I can’t find the self-belief needed to feel I have substantial talent as far as concepts like ‘career’ and ‘income’ are concerned. I really don’t know what to do. The situation looks incredibly grim.
But how about a portfolio? Have you put together samples of your work? You’ll need something to show off to advertise your skills.
Have you thought about going back to school? I don’t know how you’re fixed for qualifications but if you seriously want to get into web design or something more artistic then doing a course at a local college or arts centre might help. Not to mention the boost to your self-esteem once you realise that you’re actually making progress and getting better. Courses aren’t all that expensive and there are concessions for unemployed students.
Well, yes, but a portfolio of what, I’m not really sure.
Writing samples? But I’d need to get steady work from three or four magazines, say, to earn anything resembling an income, and so far in my life I lucked out on getting assignments from one (over five years ago). So that’s a bad area to look at.
Web URLs? I only really have this one. And I don’t know who’d be interested… I can’t do Flash stuff and whatever, so I’m not on the cutting edge of Web technology.
I haven’t got a clue, and the trouble is, I never spoke to anyone who did. I did speak to a Web designer once, but in a roundabout way they pretty much refused to offer any practical advice. It feels like my future is stacking shelves or cleaning toilets, because if I can’t do anything that impresses anyone, where else do you go?
Problems with going to school:
(1) I’m a lousy student.
(2) I’m not even officially unemployed anymore, so I wouldn’t get those concessions; and paying the full fees is out of the question.
(3) What do I do about being broke in the meantime?
Well, speaking as an outsider i.e someone who doesn’t know you personally, I’d say that if you wanted to try to make a go of becoming a web designer then you’ve got to have some web sites to show off. Just make them up, that’s what others do. You don’t actually have to have had real customers to show off what you can do.
Here’s an example. Bryan Bell is one of the best web site designers for Manila and Radio Userland sites. He’s freelance and has a website with a portfolio of his work:
http://www.bryanbell.com/portfolio
In particular look at his Radio (weblog) themes. He puts his work out and people get to know about what he can do. He makes his money from people comissioning him to do design for their own web sites based upon his freely available stuff. That’s the way a lot of other designers work. Get your stuff out there, even give it away for free, then attract paying customers to do custom work.
CSS web site designs, especially for weblogs, is a growth industry. Why not have a go at tapping into it? If you don’t show people what you can do then nobody will hire you. Use the time you have now to be building up your portfolio.
If you want to be a writer then write, but write all the time. Write about different things, in different styles (fiction and non-fiction), have an opinion on everything and write about it. Write copy and send it to people, especially online news services. Don’t wait for them to ask you for it ‘cos they won’t. If you want to write a novel then do it in your spare time because you won’t earn any money doing it. You’ll earn money for short contract pieces. Become a technology commentator, what does mobile weblogging mean for society, how email is changing into something crap, instant messaging, or write about weblogs, or weblog design.
If you want to be a designer, then design! If you want to be a writer, write! If you want to do nothing, then do nothing!
Me, I want to be a lumberjack…
What you say makes sense. It’s just a lack of belief in it after so much failure, really. When I think of offering Web design, it’s kind of like, ‘Why would anyone want to pay money for my stupid designs?’
I mean, the question is, am I actually any good? Or is this ‘creative’ thing just a long-term delusion I need to get rid of finally?
I wanted to be an artist originally, but my being a bit rubbish got in the way of that. So then people were saying, ‘You’re better at writing anyway,’ which made me consider that angle, with little success. Now I’m thinking about Web design simply because I have a Web site! Perhaps I should’ve quit when I realised I wasn’t going to be an artist. Shelf-stacking beckons!
You won’t know if you’re any good unless you have a go. If you’re crap then at least you know you tried. remember not every site is a Brian bell site. there’s a whole world of different designs and more importantly, design expectations. There are probably hundreds of SMEs (small/medium enterprise) businesses in Sandwell who’d pay a couple ‘a hundred quid for a web site. get a few under your belt then hone your skills and go for bigger clients.
But you need that portfolio.
I guess whether I’m crap or not is indicated by this site here. I change my mind about that pretty regularly.
I wouldn’t know who to contact. I don’t have the money to send out dozens of proposals to businesses picked at random from the phone book or whatever.
And I realised not so long ago, I’m not much of an ideas person, i.e. making up fake sites without a brief might not happen this side of Doomsday. *sigh*
Chrissie, you certainly like a challenge! I can say that based upon your site, no, you’re not crap. As for a brief, OK, here’s a start…
Design three web site themes in CSS, compliant in both Netscape 7 and Explorer 5/6. One design should be suitable for someone with a weblog who likes the Matrix, one for a professional journalist who also keeps a weblog for their own personal writing and one suitable for a local company that sells cheese mail order that’s just set up their first web site. You’ll need to design the overall look and feel with appropriate graphics, buttons, etc.
Hm. The journalist site sounds the easiest. A Matrix fan site suggests nothing to me at all, and I know nothing about cheese. I mean: if this were real, I’d have info from the company, so I wouldn’t need to know anything about it! Actually, that applies to all three—there’d be more information available to me.
I guess this is asking me to be imaginative in ways I’m not, really, which might just prove I’m wasting my time.
Okay, I kept pondering this. The Matrix idea drew such a blank, I somehow had to do something with it. Witness the result in the /test/ directory of this site… (Offer valid until it gets deleted or moved elsewhere!)
That’s exactly the idea. I was going to say that regardless of what you knew/thought about the Matrix its imagary is very well known and easily discoverable. What I would suggest is that it’s likely that in the majority of jobs you’ll get as a web site designer you’ll have no direct experience of the subject area e.g cheese making, nor will you get a clear idea from the client about visuals. I chose cheese making because it’s exactly the kind of small business you’re likely to get when starting out. In particular it’s likely that the client won’t really know what they want or what they want the site to look like, that’s your job. You have to become immersed in cheese, if you catch my drift, to come up with cheesy metaphors (pun intentional). What does a cheese portal look like? Who knows, it looks like whatever you want it to look like. Sure, the client may have a company logo that their nephew did for them but they won’t have a clear idea about visuals. You have to do your research, and that’s what’ll set you apart from the other designers.
Take the other site, the journalist’s weblog. What do journalist’s web sites look like? Whatever you like. Maybe you can make them along the lines of an established newspaper, but maybe that’s exactly the opposite of what a journalist would want for his/her personal site.
Can I suggest that you need to think about making templates available for people to download. The most common weblogs for instance are Moveable Type, Blogger and Radio Userland, so find out about their template format then make your designs for those. Then provide a link, ‘MT users click here to download this template/theme’, etc. Make your templates and in fact all your designs CSS-based.
That’s one way of establishing yourself. Keep an eye on what’s new, then build a weblog theme around it and give it away for free. What’s big at the movies? T3? The Hulk? Build a theme for those. Look at http://www.weblogs.com for all the most recently updated weblogs. What styles are they using? What are they writing about? Build templates for them. Attract people into your own site.
I’ve never had a comments thread this long before. Strange feeling.
All the stuff I do already is 100% CSS, in terms of font and layout control. I decided to abandon the old HTML stuff about four months ago.
You know, the trouble with giving away themes is twofold. Firstly, with all the good will in the world, I don’t get much traffic, and probably never will unless loads more people suddenly link to me (unlikely, since even ranting about it had little effect). So I don’t have much of an audience for such things. Secondly, giving the stuff away is of no benefit to me. The people who’d take this stuff for nothing are incredibly unlikely to ask me to do something more custom for a fee… we’re looking at odds of a thousand-to-one at least, which is more people than I get on here in a year.
So this is all very tenuous. I could fart around for years and hardly earn a penny. I need something concrete, and shelf-stacking still looks a better bet, doesn’t it?
Ok, you raise a fair enough point but you also know the answer. Why don’t people link to you? Why don’t people link to 98% of all weblogs? Because they’re parochial and unless you know the person, of little interest.
If you want people to come to you then you’ve got to provide something to draw them in. Write and they will come. Not tomorrow, maybe not for a while, but they will come.
Second, what’s your business model for starting up your web design business? Hope that people will guess what you can do? You’ve got to find or create a community based around your design ideas. Start some conversations. Buy this book or I’ll lend you a copy. Old business ideas don’t work anymore. You’ve got to give away to earn money. People will use your templates then ask you for customized versions. It won’t happen overnight, you’ve got to build a user base. It’ll take you the rest of this year. Is that some time you can spare or are you doing other things? You’ll never build any kind of base if you don’t give people something they want. Draw them in, then they become your customers. People won’t pay for what they can’t see.
Yes, you will need money to live while you’re doing this. Working in a supermarket is an honourable job. Any job is as honourable as you choose to make it. It’s what you bring to it that counts. You’re planning your goals, and you’re planning the steps that you need to take to get you there. Every step is a step in the right direction. It’s up to you.
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