Does a web designer need to be qualified?

Is qualification required?

[Andrea]

Hi,

Can you tell me whether or not it's necessary to have any technical qualifications for someone to refer to themselves as a Web Designer?

Thanks.

[mack]

Of course you don't need qualifications to say you are good when you can easily be judged on the work you do..

Very well said.

Like many aspects of IT web developers are judged by the quality of their work. Qualifications are good to have, but if I was looking to hire a developer i would want to see their work, not just their CV.

Mack.

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thank you for replying everyone.

Andrea

[johnnie]

I dont know... I have a Bsc. in computer science, would that make me a 'qualified' web designer / developer? Would that make me get hired instead of an amazingly talented kid still in highschool?

I think it all comes down to skills. If you got the skills, you'll get hired.

[martinibuster]

Of course you don't need qualifications to say you are good when you can easily be judged on the work you do...

Depends on who is judging it.

I recently got wind of a naive business owner who handed out a $10,000 web design contract for a fifty page website to a certified hack who did web design on the side. In this case it had nothing to do with quality, only that he'd done a crap job for a competitor.

[Lobo]

In that respect, I doubt that a bunch of letters would have made any difference to that person either..

What a great con lol ... sigh! if only clients were all like that ;-)

But I believe the question was more geared towards obtaining work in the industry ..

In fact an interesting thread maybe, " what is the toughest interview you've ever had"?

I've had some which lasted a week, included exams on knowledge of code, given a design brief to complete over night and entailed 3 interviews with different panels .. and then they put you on a god damn 3 month trial ...

Edit : Job done .. [webmasterworld.com...]

[Animated]

Andrea

just think about what type of web design job you'd do possibly and focus on those, of course the more you know the better but you really dont have to know all those programs, just the ones you think are best suited for the type of web design you do but HTML is a must:)

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thank you Animated for replying. The type of Webdesign job I would be interested in doing would involve working from home, finding work online to do quite basic websites for people.

Andrea

[Lobo]

ah! almost the webmaster dream ;) except that involves being on a beach somewhere lol ...

It's not where you do the work, but where you get the work that is the crux ...

You'd really still have to work in the industry to understand the way it works .... serve your apprenticeship / prospect like everyone else..

It all sounds so nice don't it .. do a bit of work from home and the money comes rolling ..

Strangely it doesn't quite work like that ..

Good Luck!

[Animated]

Andrea that would be really awesomw to have a job like this:) but you should consider of how people are going to find you to hire you?
If you can advertise your business well enough that people will find you and you work from home then thats great.I do freelance webdesign and SEO and i am new to the business too, i work from home.I do e-commerce too besides the web design, because as i said i am new to the business so still working up my way for people to find me.Just find different ways to advertise yourself so that people will come to you and after sometime when they see you have done a good job and words get around then they come to you.
I think that nowdays many people think they can design a plain web site which usually ends up being not the most SE friendly and well designed one.Yout should think like this try to improve your skills as much as you can so that when people come to you for their site you wont be limited in what you can do so that they stay with you.I remember when i was just starting out, i had to let a good job offer go because they wanted a dynamic php page and back then i had no knowledge of server side scripting.So as an independant web designer you should try improve yourself as much as you can because you are the one who will do the designing,programmig,SEO yourself

[Andrea]

Hi,

Thank you for replying and I agree that promotion is part of getting work as a freelance web designer. The advice I get in this forum helps too.

Andrea