Web Designer Requirements

Students interested in becoming Web Designers will need to make sure that they meet the requirements to find work in the field. While this will vary depending on the job application and specific requirements of the job title, there are consistent requirements across multiple industries and job positions. These include educational requirements, experience requirements, and skill requirements.

What is a Web Designer?

Web Designers are creative professionals who are tasked with designing the layout and assets for webpages and mobile applications. They are creative professionals who are responsible for designing evocative and visually appealing web designs for their clients, and they will work on a diverse range of different projects. They tend to be well-rounded creatives who use both creative software applications and programming knowledge to design and build web applications. Using software applications such as Figma or Adobe XD, web designers will construct the appearance and feel of both the visual and functional elements of a webpage before handing that design off to web developers who will make the design a reality. At smaller firms, a Web Designer may also be expected to work on the programming side of a web design project, so most Web Designers learn the basics of HTML/CSS and JavaScript.

Web designers are most commonly employed by design firms that contract their service to clients, though many work as self-employed freelancers or work in-house for large businesses that are regularly building or updating web applications. They will most frequently work as part of large teams of designers and developers when working on large projects, but they may also find themselves working on individual smaller assignments, particularly if they are working as freelancers. Web Designers may specialize in working on specific elements or aspects of webpages or digital applications, such as building user interfaces or working on the tactile elements of a webpage to build a positive user experience.

Read more about what a Web Designer does. 

Education

Most Web Designers will enter the job market with a four-year degree either in web design or in a related field, such as graphic design, multimedia development, or another creative field. Some Web Designers may enter the workforce with a degree in a field far flung from web design, but they will need to have either a minor in computer science/design or they will need to demonstrate their technical skills through other means.

However, there are a few paths to enter into the field of professional web design without getting a four-year degree. The best way is to receive career-focused skills training through accelerated professional training programs, such as the Web Design Certificate program offered by Noble Desktop. Courses like these will catch students up on the kinds of technical skills training that they need to find work in the industry. These courses also provide students with professionalization resources and seminars built to help catch them up to designers who gained a great deal of networking experience in their degree program.

Another way to become a Web Designer without a degree is to simply start freelancing and build a name and reputation for your work. This will be the hardest and least guided process, but it may also be the best option for students who have the technical training and design skills, but don’t have the accredited diplomas or certificates to demonstrate these skills on a resume.

Experience

Most entry-level Web Designer positions will require between 0-2 years of experience in the field. This experience is mostly acquired through internships, volunteer work or professional training in certain types of classroom work. Many jobs won’t require a lot of prior experience if you can demonstrate a strong candidacy with your other materials. However, having experience in the field is a very good way to bolster your job materials and expand on the different kinds of jobs you can apply for.

Higher-level positions will almost certainly require substantial work experience in the field. These jobs tend to target experienced designers who have years of experience working in graphic design studios. These job openings tend to target graphic designers to work as team leaders or creative directors, meaning that they will need to demonstrate that they are comfortable working with the more complex aspects of a web design project.

Skills

Being a Web Designer will demand a combination of soft skills and technical skills. Designers will need to hone their creative eye, build teamwork-related skills, and they will need proficiency in an array of technical skills. These technical skills include creative design applications like the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software, web design tools such as Figma or Adobe XD, and programming skills such as proficiency in HTML/CSS and JavaScript. All of these skills produce well-rounded professional Web Designers and are pillars of getting a job.

Beyond this, there are a lot of important soft skills that can help Web Designers meet their career goals. Most Web Designers will need to build the people skills necessary to work alongside team members on large projects. These same skills will be important for freelancers who will regularly need to work with clients and contractors. In addition, Web Designers will need to be deadline-oriented in order to make sure that assignments are completed on time, and they will need to be able to receive feedback and iterate their designs with a client’s needs in mind. More advanced Web Designers may be tasked with leading teams of designers or interfacing with clients more directly, making these soft skills even more important for anyone hoping to climb the corporate ladder.

Portfolio

One of the most important requirements for finding a job as a Web Designer is building a compelling portfolio of sample designs that tells a potential employer what kind of a designer you are. This portfolio should be composed of the best and most demonstrative web designs that you have built in any context. This can include work you’ve done as a volunteer designer, work you’ve done in coursework in a college degree program or other training program, or work you have done on your own time while building a portfolio.

It is essential that you consider what your portfolio is going to look like, especially if you aren’t entering the job market with a four-year degree. Professional training programs are excellent places to start compiling a portfolio, but without guidance, this can produce a portfolio that is somewhat aimless. Many professional training programs, such as the career certificate programs offered through Noble Desktop, will provide students with direct assistance in building a portfolio since building a portfolio isn’t as simple as dumping all of your designs into a document and calling it a day. This kind of assistance can be invaluable for students who need guidance on the more esoteric aspects of applying for a Web Design position.

Resume & LinkedIn Profile

In addition to a strong portfolio, it is important to build a strong resume and a good complementary professional online profile using a service like LinkedIn. This is an important tool for communicating your experience, history, and design expertise to hiring managers who are going to be quickly looking over a huge pile of job materials from prospective applicants. Many hiring managers will be looking to skim over your resume and make a quick decision about whether or not to continue viewing your materials, so it is essential that your resume sells your candidacy well.

Your resume will need to contain essential personal information, such as your work and education history, and provide hiring managers with an understanding of your personal design style and philosophy. It will need to be constructed in a deliberate manner that subtly tells prospective employers a story, so it can’t simply be a matter of organizing all of your work and employment history and calling it a day. This can be difficult, so if you are interested in learning more, please consult Noble’s resume guide for building web design resumes.

Since you can’t (and don’t want to) include every professional thing you’ve ever done in a resume, many aspiring designers will also build professional online profiles through platforms like LinkedIn. These profiles are important for collecting all of your professional accolades and information in a single space, and it is a valuable networking tool. Having a portfolio in this vein is vital for ensuring that you are able to put your best foot forward online. Many students may not be familiar with this platform, so anyone interested in learning more should take a look at Noble’s free article on web design LinkedIn tips.

References

The last major requirement for your application that you’ll want to prepare is a collection of professional references who can speak on your behalf. These should be individuals who can speak to your abilities as a designer and your ability to work in a professional environment. Hiring managers can look at your job materials and see that you are a talented designer, but it is your professional references who will explain that you possess the soft skills necessary to work in a studio, such as being attuned to deadlines or being detail-oriented. Ideally, these should either be supervisors or instructors who have experience working with you on web design projects. Coworkers or instructors in unrelated fields can be helpful, but these are necessarily going to be weaker resumes. You should never include friends and family in your pool of professional references.

Learn the Skills to Become a Web Designer at Noble Desktop

Students looking to build the technical skills they need to become Web Designers may want to consider the options available to them for professional training and skills development through Noble Desktop. These classes provide students with live training from expert instructors and include hands-on training and practical experience using real-world design samples. These classes are available at Noble’s Manhattan Campus or through live online instruction. No matter the delivery method, class sizes are kept small so students won’t have to compete with one another for their instructor’s attention. As a bonus, every Noble course comes with a free retake option, meaning you can take the class again within a year. This is ideal for students who want to receive more instruction and for students who want more time to gain hands-on experience that they can parlay into better job opportunities.

Students interested in becoming professional Web Designers will need a lot of skills training. For novices, Noble offers a Web Design Certificate program that will teach students how to use common web design software applications, how to code their designs in basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript, and how to use WordPress for more advanced webpage design. In addition, students enrolled in this class will receive one-on-one career mentoring assistance and professional development seminars, including portfolio-building exercises. This is an ideal course for any student who wants to start a new career in the field of web design. Noble also offers more targeted programs, such as the UX/UI Design Certificate program, which prepares students to design interactive interfaces for digital applications and products. This focused career-program de-emphasizes the importance of learning to code and emphasizes the importance of tactile user experience design.

Students who have a measure of professional training and are seeking to expand their skills may want to instead consider enrolling in one of Noble’s skills bootcamps. For example, in Noble’s Figma Bootcamp, students will learn how to use Adobe’s Figma software application to build interactive prototypes of web designs in order to test their functionality before beginning the coding process. This is an invaluable tool for any Web Designer to know how to use, and in a bootcamp, you can focus on learning individual skills to improve your own career standing.

Key Takeaways

• Anyone looking to find work as a Web Designer should make sure that they meet certain requirements and have certain materials prepared.
• Most entry-level positions require minimal prior experience, though applicants will need to demonstrate proficiency in a number of different skills.
• Students will need to build a coherent, evocative portfolio of designs that convince a hiring manager that they are worth hiring.
• Designers will also want a polished resume and a professional LinkedIn profile to provide managers with their design histories.
• Anyone looking to build the experience they need to build a portfolio or receive hands-on training in the steps of building a collection of job materials will want to consider enrolling in a Noble Desktop web design course. These courses are available in person at Noble’s Manhattan campus or in live online classrooms.