Quick Help Needed from a Web Designer...

[Bradley W]

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[Aperture]

What you want to pick as a carrier? I tend to use UPS.

 

[Bradley W]

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[nightelf]

I am doing a small report for school on what I might pick as a career. I'd like to be a web designer or something of that sort. Can someone here who is a web designer answer me these quick questions:

1. How did you learn what you know? (Basically what college or did you study on your own?)
2. How is math involved in what you do?
3. What you actually do (ie - your job position)
4. First and Last Name

PM me if you don't want to post.

Thanks!

1. I learned on my own. I used tutorials and ebooks at websites. HTML, CSS, and PHP are fast to learn. I keep updated using the Internet. You can always practice with Text Edit, or a Dreamweaver trial version, and Apache (Personal Web Sharing).

2. For the design process, I use math to calculate the proportions of the columns and things like that. I also use math for the reports in my web apps (like sales, average sale per order, etc).

3. I am a web developer. I used to design websites, but I code web applications now. I work on my own as freelancer.

4. Chris.

 

[mnkeybsness]

1. How did you learn what you know? (Basically what college or did you study on your own?)
2. How is math involved in what you do?
3. What you actually do (ie - your job position)
4. First and Last Name

(Having two responses is better than one)

1. I received a degree in New Media Communications Studies and Minored in Digital Art. Both of these were used as aides while I worked as a student web designer at my University. From what I've seen, the most successful web designers get a complementary degree to Web Design and learn everything else on their own, which is exactly what I did.

Being one that learns best from a hands-on approach with a lot of trial and error, I learned everything I know by reading through source code of websites and snippets or examples and then attempting to create something of my own.

2. I've been writing quite a bit of javascript lately using the Yahoo! UI javascript package for visual effects. With that, I use a lot of Algebra and Geometry. In fact, just the other day I was using the Pythagorean Theorem and figuring out time based on distance and rate.

I also use general math, addition/subtraction to figure out proportions for designs on sites. In the future, when CSS3 support is more available, I think math will have an even heavier influence when we are able to use counters and nth-child selectors.

3. My position at my day job is "Web Designer," but I consider my self more of a "Web Professional," having background and making use of my degree in Communications, working in usability testing, search engine optimization, light-medium application programming and of course, design.

I also work as a freelance designer, using all of my web skills, along with understanding of the business world to help clients.

4. Paul Armstrong


--Good Luck, let me know if you'd like any more information.

 

[Makosuke]

Ahh, why not:

1. How did you learn what you know? (Basically what college or did you study on your own?)

I took a single introductory HTML college course while I was in high school in the mid-90s, but everything else I learned was through reading the specs at W3C.org, the occasional online tutorial, and looking at how other people did stuff. I never even bought a book, but then I don't do much with PHP or MySQL that isn't canned, so my knowledge is limited primarily to markup and CSS. I did take a handful of C++ classes in college, so I can more or less read perl or PHP syntax, but I haven't put in the time to be able to write anything in either.

2. How is math involved in what you do?

The web design work I do, very little--basic algebra to figure out proportions, and the ability to think in hex, but that's about it. My "day job" programming control systems uses considerably more, although I haven't used a tenth of the Calculus I studied in college (Physics major--we take more math than the Math majors).

3. What you actually do (ie - your job position)

Freelance markup monkey; I can design basic stuff, but my brother is a graphic artist so he works up the designs and graphics, then I make them look like what he visualized when you browse to it. Day job is, again, control systems programmer and IT guy for an energy lab, but that's unrelated--I don't even do the lab's website anymore.

4. First and Last Name

Marc Marshall, which you could've found by following my homepage link, but why the heck do you want to know?

[Edit: I just went and looked purely out of curiosity, and it looks like the first pages from that class were in 1996... ahh, the days of unclosed tags, background textures, and under construction GIFs. Glad I saved that stuff.]

 

[Bradley W]

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[NoNameBrand]

Guess I missed this by a few days.


1. How did you learn what you know?

Self-taught for the graphic design and HTML side of things; studied computer science at university (amongst other things)

2. How is math involved in what you do?

In the design, it's just basic arithmetic; though I tend to think of curved lines very mathematically. The web software I've written has more serious math in it - algebra, statistics, and graph theory.

3. What you actually do (ie - your job position)

I'm a software engineer and graphic designer - I mostly design a custom enterprise web application for my employers, but also do various small print and web graphic design projects.

4. First and Last Name
Jamie Reid