This found its way to my inbox, and got a chuckle out of me. I hope it's okay to post here, I'm hoping other people can get some amusement out of this.


How to become a web designer

21 January 2007 A new day and a new blog post. Recently I read Fruda’s guide on a “perfect client realtionship”. I am afraid to say he got it all wrong. So I have decided to write a guide to show you all how it is done. This is intended for anyone who is starting in the web design area.
Getting some skills
First you need to get some web cred, this is like street cred except on the internet. I suggest starting out by making some sweet sigs. You can find some photoshop tutorials on Good Tutorials, copy the tutorials EXACTLY and don’t try to make something different from what they do, and do NOT experiment. So get some sigs with game renders on them and that. Post them like spam all over forums e.g. clantemplates and gamerenders.
When you post, type like you do on MSN. Don’t try and make sense and use grammar or people will think you’re a nerd. Just make sure words aren’t longer than 5 letters and use numbers and explanation marks wherever you can.
Once you’ve become leet at sigs then you can move on to templates. Again go through as many tutorials as possible and just keep copying until it gets stuck in your head. When using fonts make sure you use small pixel fonts (10px/8px) ones. Give them a black border. Make sure you use gloss to the extent some people call “overkill”. Keep opacity on the gloss at around 85% and use it wherever possible. You can even gloss the main text, it will give a more personal touch. Use as many gradients as possible on your design and use a variety of clashing colours. There are people out there who say design usable and readable websites, ignore them as well. What is the point of conforming to “standards”, that means no one can ever move forward. So just make it as wild, random and weird as possible. Here are some good colour combo’s to use:

• Purple and Red
• Green and Blue
• Black and Red

Never, ever use white on your designs. White is for newbs who are uninventive. Choose font colours which are hard to read, this means the reader has to highlight the text and so they look a lot closer at the text.
When you code your website, always slice it up in photoshop and use as many tables as you can. Tables make everything organised so use them. Don’t use the div tag, I mean comon the name of the tag is DIV how much of a hint do you need !
How much to charge and who to sell to
This is a common mistake. Most people try to target business type websites, what you need to do is go for the clans. I’m not talking league division clans, I mean the everyday clan run by a 13 year old like yourself. You should charge around $6 per template and $2 per sub page. Then as you get better move up till you eventually get to the big numbers like $30 per template and $6 per sub page.
Naming your business
So called “experts” out there will tell you to just use your name. They are WRONG, ignore them and don’t listen to anything they say. What you need to do is get a really catchy name, something like awesome-dezigns.com. Having awesome in it makes the person think the designer must be awesome themselves. If you put design in the name, spell it with a Z so it sounds more cool and makes you look more creative. Other cool “extensions” like dezigns are media and crew. Here are some other suggestions:

• MaX-D3Zigns
• DaMedia-mass1ve
• sosickcr3w

Now the .com’s for these domains are obviously taken as they are high profile. So try the .tk extension or .info, something which makes you stand out from the crowd.
Managing clients
Only ever communicate via MSN, e-mailing makes the client feel less in control. When speaking with the client, type like you do to your mates on MSN. This will make the client feel more comfortable with you and your abilities. The more leet you type the better, thats preety much the standard rule.
However, despite this its a good idea to have an email address incase they are offline. I would reccomend a hotmail address like love2sp00ge@hotmail.com. A free email address reinforces the more personal relationship with the client, they will think of you more as a friend. [Thanks to Adam Hall for this point !]

If the client doesn’t like something you’ve done, tell them that they don’t understand how websites work and this is the best thing to do. If the client keeps bothering you then tell him/her to shut up. This might seem forward, but by asserting your authority your making it clear to them that you know what is best. After this they should stop bothering you then.
Edit - Dear all retards, This post is sarcastic. I have been forced to point this out due to the level of general stupidity on the internet. It’s amazing how many people took this seriously.

lol. nice.... but maybe more suitable in the General Discussions forum

its easy how to become a website designer, you just ..... design a website then your a website designer

its easy how to become a website designer, you just ..... design a website then your a website designer

If only it were that easy.

So, using that 'logic', if I change my own air filter in my car, or change my own wiper blades, then I'm a mechanic ?? NOT !!

LadynRed my car needs a little work. Do you have any time this week? I see you changed your air filter so you must be a mechanic.

Funny post Newbie.

And unfortunately, the responses prove the post. ( Which I didn't write, by the way, so I'm undeserving of praise. )

Dilbert's boss once said programmers are over paid. Anyone can do programming. It's just a bunch of stupid typing.

Well, I can be a web designer. I have a mouse, and it's got TWO buttons, which makes me twice as good a designer as people who use Macs. So I must be really good.

That's how you should market yourself. "Twice the mouse buttons means I'm twice the designer"

Yeah, and everybody knows creative people use Macs, so I'm golden. Only, someone out there is thinking about buying one of those crazy trackball things with buttons up the wazoo. I'm going to paint fake buttons all up and down my mouse.

I think Green Lush's post was more insightful than he or she may have thought. A web designer is someone who designs web sites ( or pages ). That means your kid brother, or your nephew. I knew a guy once - I'm not making this up, I'm not creative enough - who told me learning HTML is really useful because then you can clean up the web pages you generate in Word. He was a web designer, although not a very good one, by this straight forward definition.

Now I realize there's no accounting for taste. One man's garbage is another man's gold, and all that. But I would never call myself a web designer, and I know I know more html than most people. I have to be, with the way ASP.NET controls render ( junk, best to avoid them ). But I'm humbled in the presence of someone like LadynRed when it comes to not just knowing all the tags, or which property does what, but how to lay something out. From the way she answers questions, it's obvious she doesn't run into walls the way a lot of us do, because she's already hit them, mapped them out, and avoids them.

If you're paying by the hour, that's a pretty good skill to have. And I'm not trying to slight you, VanGogh, your advice is every bit as wise, it's just that I've seen it mostly in regards to SEO.

I actually used to post more in the html and css forums, but when LadynRed arrived she always beat me to the posts. Now I spend my time more at the seo side of the forum. If you look back about year you'll find a lot of my posts in the coding forums.

Having LadynRed works for me since there were times I'd spend an hour or two trying to figure out someone's problem. And besides she knows quite a lot and has taught me a few tricks since arriving.

It's really just experience to remember all the tags. Same for developing an all css layout. It took me about two weeks to teach myself how to build my first tableless site. It wasn't necessarily the best way to layout a site, but I got it to work. I think I used far too much absolute positioning back then.

Something I started then and continue now is I try to learn one new thing on every site I develop. One new css property or one new layout technique, anything new. It might not seem like a lot, but a year passes, you look back, and you'll be amazed how much you've learned.

Another good practice is anytime you come across a web page that has done something and you're not sure how, stop and look at the source and try to figure out how they did what they did. At the very least bookmark it so you can look later.

After I had the basics I learned a lot from tearing apart other sites.

That's a hell of a recipie.

I wish i could become a web designer, but i'm too darn picky about every little detail. I'm sure i could design and develop a site but the it would take me a month to decide on background color.

IPsecure one of the important things in web design is learning to give up a little control. You can spend that month choosing a background color, but I might still see something different on my monitor.

It's hard to accept, but designing for the web means you need to be more flexible since no matter how hard you try you never get that pinpoint control.

Originally Posted by vangogh

That's how you should market yourself. "Twice the mouse buttons means I'm twice the designer"

^^ rofl.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I actually used to post more in the html and css forums, but when LadynRed arrived she always beat me to the posts. Now I spend my time more at the seo side of the forum. If you look back about year you'll find a lot of my posts in the coding forums.

^^ true ... i don't remember many WT usernames since i read a LOT of posts even if only replying very very very rarely ... but yours i did, so basically you must've been posting good stuff in the html/css forums the last 3 years

Cool. I'm glad I stood out back then. There were days when I was first starting my business and didn't have a lot to do and spent all day trying to solve someone's problem here. I think one day I worked helping someone write a simple javascript applicaton. I probably spent about 5 hours on it.

Only, someone out there is thinking about buying one of those crazy trackball things with buttons up the wazoo.

Ummm... I have a trackball with 2 buttons and a mousewheel I find I get a lot more control in Photoshop with the trackball than a regular mouse. My trackball is more like a marble though, I use a Logitech Wireless Trackman

After I had the basics I learned a lot from tearing apart other sites.

Absolutely ! I still go digging into code on other sites to see how they accomplished something I like. I learned a LOT tearing into ZenGarden sites.

VanGogh, I didn't mean to hog the html/css forums.. lol However, it is nice to know that my input is appreciated. I like helping people and helping them learn too. You should never stop learning !

I'm somewhat in vangogh's boat in that I tend to post to all areas, but find myself posting more and more in the SEO forums lately.

Why? It's where the most noise lies, and where people are most likely to counter a piece of good advice with a bad piece of advice.

For example, Hirst or vangogh or myself may make a point and then "ISellAndExchangeTextLinksSEO" may post some 8-word answer that either makes no sense or (much worse IMHO) tells people exactly what they want to hear.

So...it becomes necessary for others to step in and ensure that a proper message is delivered. With basic issues of design and coding, it's usually a case of "hi, how do you do this?" "Did you try this code?" "Yeah, it works, thanks a lot!" People stop posting to the thread, baby goes to sleep.

I'm not trying to slag what LNR does or anything like that...I'm just pointing out that a correct answer tends to stand on its own merit more in coding forums than it does in SEO forums.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

For example, Hirst or vangogh or myself may make a point and then "ISellAndExchangeTextLinksSEO" may post some 8-word answer that either makes no sense or (much worse IMHO) tells people exactly what they want to hear.

I've noticed this myself, which is why I keep starting new threads over there. But then I had a thought - I wonder if anybody reads them. Well, the people who need to, anyway. You have to admit, though, it's pretty amusing. Like that guy who wanted to hear that PR 5 is better than PR 4, and when people explained things to him, the guy just kept saying you were "over analyzing" the situation.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I'm not trying to slag what LNR does or anything like that...I'm just pointing out that a correct answer tends to stand on its own merit more in coding forums than it does in SEO forums.

This is an interesting observation. Maybe it's just easier to test things using a text editor, than time, patience, and analysis of data?

I figure that's part of it. I also figure there are three other factors.

1) SEO is a form of marketing. As such, asking for advice on SEO is the same as asking for marketing advice.

Now...let's say I've discovered a trick to ranking highly, or some shortcut. You want to know how to rank highly. But I'm a jerk, and i don't want to share that information with you.

I might choose not to provide you with this information, or I might choose to provide you with the opposite, or I might choose to send you down an unrelated and incorrect path. In other words, I might feed you misinformation.

With a text editor to test with, that's a lot more difficult.

2) The number of get-rich-quick ideas for SEO. People would rather take the short road than the long road.

Again, with a text editor, that's more difficult.

3) The number of people who adopt "lemming logic" simply because someone else told them to do something. "Link exchange. That'll solve your problem." (100 voices in unison) "Okay!" (100 bodies down a cliff.)

The last two may be extensions of the time/patience factor, now that I read them more closely. Not really sure how I'd interpret that, though.

I think you're right. Politicals talk about nuclear proliferation, but I bet the number of people who can't motivate themselves to keep a job are trying the web and some crazy home based business idea out in mass. Proliferation of spam, or of laziness at least.

WRT #1, do you read Dilbert? I read a strip last night where someone told him how to deliver a speach: "Even though technically we're competing with each other, I'm going to share my secret to relaxing, because you look tense. I just picture myself naked, and imagine everyone in the audience is a Mary Kay salesperson and has a video camera. Good luck!"

I'd say that's about the same as "Join 1,000 link exchanges and it'll magically lift you above the competition." Should have a minor effect in hurting your rankings, but also waste your time so you can't accomplish anything. But then I also think most of the people who say this are lemmings, and not saboteurs.

I think you're right, it's mainly get-rich-quick. I guess it's a tempting though. You don't need a store front anymore, just a $3 hosting plan. So why shouldn't everything else be equally fantastical? I had a friend once who wanted to build a web based super store, like Target or WalMart, and planned to just go out and buy something, then ship it when somebody ordered from him. He thought buying a slot in Yahoo Businesses would be all he had to do. ( This was back in the late 90s. ) I asked him what he would do about returns, he didn't have an answer.

good advises