Week 5::
My Rules for Web Design.
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My Personal Rules for Design
"I believe that to be a good designer and coder you have to self discipline yourself. I also believe that allot of that comes from how you treat your school participation. Obviously some one who is absent all the time, and doesn't do much in the homework department of school, will probably be a horrible designer.
Self decipline, is very important when it comes to working with clients. Some one who is late is not going to get paid."
Designing
First before I start a project, I think about the design. I usually will browse website's for a while, trying to get a feel of what I want to create. Depending on the project, I will look in the same category of site pages live on the web, to get a feel of what I should create. For a good site on CSS Design, check out CSSMANIA.COM
Coding
Know your code, if you don't, then learn. Get in all the good habits, and use comments. Using comments will help you to remember what your doing, and will help anyone who's looking at your code. Learn all the tricks of the masters, check out WEBDESIGNERWALL.COM
GETTING PAID
Get paid, don't be a sucker, if you know your good, then your probably good. Obviously before you get paid, you have to have something to offer people. If you don't have the glorious portfolio, don't sweat it. Get in the habit of designing fictitious logos, or volunteer a website or two. If your in school, dammit get into a club, or design for a club. If their needy enough, they'll appreciate anything you have to offer.
Freelancing check out WAKEUPLATER.COM
BLOGG!
Read blog's, or get a blog. After much research, I believe blog's are the next big bang. Allot of industry standard pages are built with in the framework of Wordpress. Well, what does this mean? This means that you can spend 80 percent of your time generating content, rather than messing with the development of your site. In my browsing I have learned, that owning a respectable CMS site, is basically one huge resume.
Oh yea, and browse the internet. You might learn something.