My name is John Loudon and I am a professional web designer. My working background is 4 years freelance and just under a one-years experience working as a middleweight web designer.
I have written this article to highlight my thoughts of the industry as it currently stands, with the lines of Graphic design, Web design, and Web development all becoming one.
If you are interested in this article then please leave your feedback here or follow me on Twitter. A big shout out to me colleague Bryan Davis (that’s who runs this site)
Over the last 10 years alone we can see a massive growth in the online sector. Businesses are becoming more aware of the advantages of internet trading and advertising. Why pay for a multitude of costs including, staff, shop rental and stock transportation when it is much cheaper and almost as effective to become a sole online store? Advertising alone can be very costly. A website however is a lifetime advert, provided you renew your hosting and are willing to update product offers and content.
It’s with this growth that new media artists and graphic designers alike are jumping onto the Internet bandwagon and becoming digital (web) designers. Though, as most of us aware this has been happening for some time. Now we have to question what’s in store for the future designers of the online market? We know the web changes rapidly and that it can become fairly daunting to keep up with an ever moving industry, with the birth of the Web 2.0 many of us suddenly found ourselves having not only to master the use of JavaScript but to use it in a much more advanced way i.e. Ajax.
The more technologies that become available the more a client will expect in their website. I foresee that web design and web development will fuse into the one job as did graphic design and web design. Indeed it has already begun. More is being asked of new term juniors within companies. They’re expected to know all about design principles while having the technical skill and aptitude to create PHP and MySql sites, along with designing and skinning the website with CSS. A few years back that would have been classed as a middleweight and even then only a select few individuals would have been capable of carrying out work of that level.
With the current economical climate being what it is, everyone is expected to step up to the plate and to be honest I think it’s a good thing. The more people we have at that high a standard the faster the Internet will evolve and move forward. Times are changing, the web is changing so I guess the question is, are you?
Finally someone who can write a good blog ! I loved your post and will be telling others about it. Subscribing to your RSS feed now. Thanks
@Graphic Designer Perthshire – Hey thanks for the compliment, it good to hear the post is a appreciated.