A little advice please?

danielmasoomi

New Member
Hello all just a quick question - the answer may not be so simple!
I am currently in a job as a creative for UI design.
I am graphic designer and know NOTHING about coding.
I want to make myself more valuable to the company and to myself in the future I would like to learn how to code apps as well as design them.
I believe Xcode is what I need to learn. I have a book called - Iphone application for Dummies by Neal Goldstein - could this help me by a coder to teach myself or will I need much more than that to get me started?
Like I said I have zero experience in coding, If anyone can put this in to perspective for me of how realistic the challenge is or any advice I would be most grateful.
Thanks in advance to anyone that helps.
D.
 
danielmasoomi said:
Hello all just a quick question - the answer may not be so simple!
I am currently in a job as a creative for UI design.
I am graphic designer and know NOTHING about coding.
I want to make myself more valuable to the company and to myself in the future I would like to learn how to code apps as well as design them.
I believe Xcode is what I need to learn. I have a book called - Iphone application for Dummies by Neal Goldstein - could this help me by a coder to teach myself or will I need much more than that to get me started?
Like I said I have zero experience in coding, If anyone can put this in to perspective for me of how realistic the challenge is or any advice I would be most grateful.
Thanks in advance to anyone that helps.
D.
I am in the same position as you mate (in terms of coding UI). I know a decent chunk of html/css now and learnt this through Treehouse. They have a learn ios development section. Would this be of use? Says XCode in the description.
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Its well priced too, use it very often :)
Out of interest, what is the name of the job role you're in? (Excuse my nosey-ness)
B
 
I'm was in that position... started to code on DW...
...now I work a few experienced programmers. (how depressing I can't even learn such useful knowledge)
Anyway, I think you should go through that book that you already have... keep trying things out, regularly make code, ask questions, post on communities and get feedback.
If you are programming for iOS see what apple have to offer their developers.
 
Hi lads thanks for the comments.
Ben thank you for the link and great advice. I will defiantly look it up. This is my first design job since uni. Before this is just done mainly logo and print design, however in my job now I have been thrown in to designing apps. My role when I started was Junior Designer but I found my way with the looks of apps and love it. I get left alone now to manage most projects I do and communicate with clients so its really good. I just want to be able to do it all rather than just design ( Add a few pennies to my wage packet )
what is it you do Ben?
Alex thats great advice i will go through the book and try and pick things up is Xcode the general programme to use to develop apps or is there others you have came across? Looks like I will be busy on here asking you all for feedback and advice and being a pain in the arse!
Thanks again!
 
Xcode is the way to start, you can't build for iOS without using that. You can download it for free, but I believe you need a developer paid account to sell it on iTunes.

If you know some HTML already, why not try building an HTML5 site first, start a single panel app in Xcode then drop a browser object on it to fill the window, include the HTML folder in the project and get the app to point your browser object to it as your default target. Sounds more complex than it is. I think the same kind of principle works for Android and Windows too.

Work on Treehouse though if you get a chance, it's great and valuable! If you can't afford it there are other great tutorials at http://mobile.tutsplus.com/ - take a look.
 
Hello Daniel
If you are not good in coding and are good in designing to design the banners images, product images etc then you must be a graphic designer. Graphic designer and web designer both are differnet job profile.
If you are good in graphic designing then why you are going to learn HTML, CSS etc.
Come to point..... please find this book "HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition by Castro, Elizabeth" on Amazon web store. This is wonderful book and you can learn a lot of things rest of coding.
 
The last thread in this post is almost half a year old. I don't think they're still looking for answers! :p
 
Also Arianna, I think Graphic designer is all encompassing.
The subs are Print designer and web designer. I didn't get a web design degree, I got a graphic design degree and it included both print and web, however I consider myself a print designer/illustrator because I don't market any web design skills.
 
Hmm, tricky subject, because web designer means different things to different people. As far as I'm concerned, graphic designers work with graphics and web developers build websites. Web designers seem to lie somewhere in the middle, depending on who's using the phrase... I've seen job ads asking for web designers with a "Strong knowledge of PHP, JavaScript, Ruby" etc etc which is just plain wrong, because those things have absolutely nothing to do with visual design.
 
Sean Lee-Amies said:
Hmm, tricky subject, because web designer means different things to different people. As far as I'm concerned, graphic designers work with graphics and web developers build websites. Web designers seem to lie somewhere in the middle, depending on who's using the phrase... I've seen job ads asking for web designers with a "Strong knowledge of PHP, JavaScript, Ruby" etc etc which is just plain wrong, because those things have absolutely nothing to do with visual design.
I agree - I've applied for Graphic Design positions before where they grill you in the interview about coding knowledge and ask questions that could only be relevant to a web developer. It's annoying because these agencies should really know the difference. In most cases they're looking for an exceptional graphic designer and web developer rolled into one but for Junior/Middleweight Designer wages :p
 
Yeah, it's stupid. It's like asking a soldier to not only fulfil their duties, but to design and build all of their equipment too. And the fact that they usually tend to offer sub-par salaries (I've seen this too, twice the skills, half the pay) should be a massive red flag to anyone looking for new work. *grumble grumble*
Oh well :D What's worse is when people pretend that they can do both; you'll have a web developer who downloaded Photoshop without really learning anything about design or a designer who just jumped straight into WordPress thinking they can build huge e-commerce sites just like that!
 
Sean Lee-Amies said:
Yeah, it's stupid. It's like asking a soldier to not only fulfil their duties, but to design and build all of their equipment too. And the fact that they usually tend to offer sub-par salaries (I've seen this too, twice the skills, half the pay) should be a massive red flag to anyone looking for new work. *grumble grumble*
Oh well :D What's worse is when people pretend that they can do both; you'll have a web developer who downloaded Photoshop without really learning anything about design or a designer who just jumped straight into WordPress thinking they can build huge e-commerce sites just like that!
Indeed. I've good HTML/CSS/PHP knowledge. Enough to get by anyway. I've done so many websites by way of Wordpress themes, and making adjustments to the theme's coding accordingly - so as to customise further. But I'll never call myself a web developer. Even some web designers now are more on the side of dev than they are design. I'll leave the hefty coding and e-comm to those who know what they're doing hehe :D
 
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