Posted by Trey Baird. Follow me on Twitter!

Website Design?

So you want to build websites for a living?  It’s not that unusual.  In fact, it’s a common goal for many people, because the web design industry is incredibly fierce with competition, and there are many, many talented and not-so-talented people in the industry right now.  If you are going to stand a chance, you need a strategy for how you are going to get noticed in this overpopulated industry.  You need to be really good at what you do, so here’s a little information.

This Is Your Brain On Web Design…

Building a site engages both sides of the brain.  Putting yourself in the position of the reader and figuring out how you want them to interpret the site makes good use out of your left brain, as well as learning and utilizing code such as CSS and HTML.  Then there is the right brain, which comes into play when it comes to the site design, color schemes, the usage of pictures, and such.  Your creative side comes out to play in this regard.

Building a great website involves using both sides of your brain.  However, most people aren’t skilled at using both sides of their brain, instead they tend to be stronger on one side or the other.  Left brain dominated people will tend to gravitate towards the coding, structure, and functionality of the site, and thus become DEVELOPERS.  Right brain dominated people will probably be attrracted to the design and look of the site, and become DESIGNERS.

And aside from the fact that each job description will draw upon strengths from seperate sides of the brain, they each involve building a complex set of skills completely independant of each other.  Much like learning to cook and learning how to drive, you can’t learn them both at the same time… they both require seperate significant investments of time and effort.  Remember, these are two completely different jobs!

And For Those Who Can Do It All:

Nowadays, a third group is emerging.  A select, very rare group of people who want to be engange both sides of their brains, and do the job of a DEVELOPER and a DESIGNER at the same time!  How can this be?  If you desire to become a DEVIGNER, then you can be sure that you have a lot of learning and practice ahead of you, but you’ll be enterting into a select group of people and thus be able to cut down significantly on the factor of competition.  The fact is that there is very little competition in the devigner industry because few people are capable of doing it well.

Now comes the interesting part!

For reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, designers and developers tend to hate each other with a deep passion.  They hate having to work with each other, and they hate people confusing what the do with the other group.  However, both groups are equally important.  Each group tend to be touchy about the fact that people from the other group get to share in their success, so if you plan to become a devigner, then rest assured that you are traveling down a rocky road.

If you find the courage to brave this rocky road and to invest the enourmous amount of time and energy into becoming a devigner, then you will become a highly valuable asset to any company that needs a website.  You will be able to create a high quality website from scratch, and modify it when needed.  You will be able to do the work of two people or even more without the hassle of working with other people.  You will be able to accomplish quickly what takes a team much longer to do.

But I Can’t Teach You How

I am neither a developer or a designer, and I’m far from being a devigner.  I know enough HTML and CSS to get me by, and I am only interested in web design as a tool to promote my business endeavors, so I’m not the person to learn from regarding how to enter this field.  I just figured that I would let my readers know about this new movement in the web design industry, because I think that becoming a web devigner is going to be a big deal in the upcoming decade.  The people who are able to successfully code a website and design it simultaneously are going to be incredibly valuable, and if you’re looking for a career for the future, consider becoming a devigner!