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After finishing my last year of A-levels at Trinity School in Teignmouth, I found myself on a metaphorical cliff edge, lacking a direction of where to go next. I decided the best way to proceed was to take some time out to focus on exploring different potential careers in order to find which of my interests I should pursue.
One of the potential careers I wanted to look into was web design, having had my first experience during my ICT and Business A-levels. After doing much online research I had found conflicting descriptions of what life in the web design industry was actually like and in the end I decided the only way to get a definitively clear idea of working in the web design industry was going to be through work experience.
I started by researching “web designers in Devon” made a short list, then began emailing CV’s and covering letters, it wasn’t long before I was contacted by Daneswood who offered to give me a week of their time and after almost being fooled into arriving at 6 in the morning, I arrived to start it on Monday the 24th at 9am.
Having designed a few of my own sites previously I was expecting to be using front of house design software, however I quickly discovered that while these front of house design softwares were an easy and efficient method of creating a website for myself, they do have a large limitations, and especially for clients who need their website to have very specific layouts, functionalities and customisations. I was therefore introduced to WordPress, a content management system that powers over 40% of the web. WordPress enables you to build a website based on criteria and options selected, which to me at first felt a little backwards however I quickly picked it up.
I was also introduced to an application called Dreamweaver, another software used in the profession. Dreamweaver builds webpages using html and CSS coding. This had always been a worry of mine as I’d never been that strong at coding during my A-level. Contrary to this however, when the team challenged me to produce a holding page for one of their clients, I found myself supported, shown a wide range resources that would with hard work and time teach me what was required in order to complete the task.
As Pete Weeks the managing director told me, “Coding is a massive, complex subject and in web design nobody knows everything. You should have a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS, for whatever area of web design you go into these will be necessary basic skills, but apart from this it will be dependent on which area of web design you want to go into as to what you will need to learn. Even when you do know what you need to for your day to day job, there will always come a project where there is a problem that you’re just not sure about, then you can look for online coding tips or ask a colleague”. On that last point, I can confirm that most of the problems you may encounter in web design and development can simply be solved by a collaborative group discussion with fellow designers and developers. When recruiting, Daneswood always look for candidates with great people skills first and foremost before they assess technical ability. In the words of Pete himself, “technical skills can be learned but good people skills sadly often can’t be”. This means the office is full of friendly and supportive employees, creating an environment that encourages collaboration on problems yet equally respects the importance of undistracted solo work.
Overall I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work with the Daneswood team, what I’ve learned is that if this is an industry you’re thinking about going into:
- First look at apprenticeships of college courses involving HTML and CSS and see if it interests you.
- Ask yourself are you people friendly?
- Ask yourself do you have an eye for detail?
- Can you work comfortably on both mac and windows platforms?
- Can you work to a deadline?
- But most, are you patient and dedicated to remain at your desk when coding fails for no apparent reason?
Thanks again to the Daneswood team for this invaluable and thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Marcus Moore