What got you interested in web design?

D

Dave1975

Active Member
Hey everyone,

I remember my first interest in web design was kicked off by my old boss asking me to do them a web page, it was for a local signmakers, the day after he asked me I was in WHS and spotted Practical Web Design magazine (I still have the issue on my shelf!) from there I started working on some old school table layouts in Frontpage (wow! :blink:). After that little side project I decided I wanted to learn more, and was fortunate enough in that my girlfriends brother worked for a local design agency, I arranged to get some web design tutorials/lessons with him.

After that I've never looked back, constantly trying to improve my skills and knowledge, and constantly being inspired by web design, how did you first become interested in web design? and what was the first site you ever worked on?
 
Oh gosh, hmm I think it was just part of the curiousity of the fascination of having the web so early on when ICQ was king! and Windows XP was a dream and Encarta was the best place for info and rare links....
Anyhoo, I cam across a few home made websites trying to explain how to do it; made a few lame ass attempts in Geocities HomeBuilder (i think it was called) and Frontpage.
Gradually moved up to html and tables woo, before I started college, and so on.
 
wow Blueocto, mine was nothing like that... I just got interested in a bit of coding, then bought a design magazine and got hooked on design trends, so started messing around on photoshop, which i had about fifteen 30 day trials of!
 
Hello to everybody! :)
Greg, congratulations with 4 months! ;)

First time it was at the College, learning web programming. Then, I put this aside and forgot about it. Time has past and once at my work site I've got a CSS book (named CSS Zen Garden) as a gift. I felt in love with it so I decided to try myself in Web Design. It all happened three months ago. :)
 
I was actually in 8th grade and I was in the school library and I always had an interest in computers so I was looking at computer books. I saw a book on HTML and was like "hmm that sounds cool" so I started experimenting. It wasn't much experimenting and I didn't really make it something I did as a hobby until Freshman year of high school...then I took a class that was an intro to illustrator, photoshop, an animation program and autoCAD. I had an interest in photoshop but it was kinda an indifferent interest and I really didn't learn anything from the class besides that I liked it.

I downloaded (shh) a copy of photoshop and got back into working with HTML and stuff and before long I was making sites here and there...then in my junior year (2 years after I started learning photoshop and html) I got my job as a part-time designer and i've been there ever since.

Now i'm in love with design...it's epic.
 
When I first got started... CSS did not exist. Graphical content amounted to an animated gif, (not too big though) the slow dial-ups took to long to load the page.
 
I did print at school. And told myself I'd never get involved in web. I hate coding so I ruled that out.

Then someone came a long asking for a PS file of a web page. No coding involved.

I was hooked. Aesthetic design, UI and grads are my passion! :D

Now all I want to do is find MILLIONS of developers who need static web pages!
 
god i feel really old now.. i started out when making webpages were done using only text editor or Quark Xpress (as Quark Xpress 2 had the save as html function back then). Oh and dealt with alot of questions by asking people through mIRC back in the day.... my first website was for my school, and it was only viewed 3 times i think LOL
 
I used to think I was good with graphics and print (larf) and decided to make myself a portfolio for the 'works' I'd done. I wanted to learn it right so I started reading into it and decided that I was shit at print and would much rather try web. After that I realised I was pretty good at it and became enthralled. First site I ever made was about two years ago (and didn't use tables! I learned it the right way from the outset).
 
I was into photography first and was told i had a talent for it - Ide always been interested in art too which helped.

I put together a website using publisher for my photos for friends and family to see and i hosted it under whitewashphotography.tk ! haha

Got a week work experience at MagicSeaweed after that for my year 10 work experience and was intrigued by the 4 guys running that website! got a job doing product photography and photo editing for them. learnt a bit of code on the side and made myself a proper website which is really the first website I ever built (I dont count publisher If im being honest!)

Im still proud of it so its stayed in my portfolio - but like Harry I didnt use tables at all - and if you check my code you will see its neatness and validation ;)

FIRST WEBSITE

The site started as a photography portfolio and then I added more works as I got them. Now I cant stop designing and only see one career for myself!
 
the women! :) they digg my nerd'ness ... well.. thats what i convinced myself of at the time lol
 
"god i feel really old now.." think yourself lucky I am really old!

What got you interested in web design?

I got into web design about 4 or so years ago. I wanted a site myself and I thought I'd have a go. I was halfway through designing it when I read an article about CSS and standards based design. Something in this resonated with me and I spent a couple of years dabbling under the hood, looking at style sheets and code and visiting CSS gallery sites all day long.
 
I found this book in the school library, HTML for Kids (HTML FOR KIDS) and I was hooked. I learned CSS from W3Schools and practice, then eventually some other languages. I wanted my part of the web, and I got it myself.
 
It was a variation of dabbling in HTML at school and seeing a site and thinking got I could make something better than this in photoshop but just couldn't code it so I started to learn code.
 
My first time was in first grade in high school. I was a pseudo poet and I wrote some lyrics about my teachers, pals etc. Next was a mini-portal period about fun in high school (all included in poem :p) and next I was on Uni making sites for my friends, next for Mat from London (proofhq team :p)
 
I used to do a lot a Graffiti (only on legal walls of course) and we were a group of 4 who always painted together so we wanted to have a crew website. And me being the only person who owned a PC (this was back in 1997), I decided to give it a go and was very fascinated with the fact that you could reach out to such a wide audience. I built it in frames, and my god it was a piece of crap, but I remember being very proud of my achievement at the time :)

I then decided to do a short course in Multimedia and the web continued to fascinate me as a platform. So I started getting more serious about it, and read tutorials on HTML, did a few sites for mates and so on. Later on I did another Course and a lot of studying on my own, and then decided I wanted to pursue Web Design as a career.

I really wish I had some of my first designs, it'd be really fun to see them again now. :D
 
I feel slightly embarrassed to say this, but if anyone out there knows how much of a craze that one virtual pet site was years ago...well, I started dabbling in HTML/CSS from there. All the cool kids could customize their profiles, and I'm never one to hang back from a trend. :p

Unfortunately, unlike some of you I learned it completely wrong for the outset. I started, hmm...four-ish years ago? I had absolutely no idea what the word 'semantic' meant up until a year and a half ago. I think it was mostly because at the beginning I relied on tons of dodgy tutorials and learned more for the sake of accomplishing a specific goal than learning for the sake of learning.

I've mostly been self-taught, and about two years back I thought I was incredible at this whole web design thing.

Then my horizons expanded. :sad:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top