What next in our web design essentials course

Holy smoke, you made it to the end. It was a long course, I know, and congratulations to you. I bet you, all your friends and colleagues, or whoever, classmates, have probably been watching Netflix, while you've being struggling through this course, with a guy, with a Kiwi accent. Welcome to the end though, and you should like, don't take it for granted, you probably don't, but you should walk around the rest of week, the rest of the month, head held high, "I upskilled myself, and I am a pretty good Starter Web Designer." 

Now we've covered a lot in this Web Design course, but you've probably got a feeling that there is, like lots more to learn, and there is. So what I really hope is there was a really good-- I tried to make it really good, some actual concrete stuff that we've learnt, but also, ways of problem solving, and I guess that's, that was my kind of goal for this course. 

Now what should you do next? What next is to actually go and build a site. You've been following along with me, and that is great. We've learnt loads, we tried to make it kind of segmented, so we built as we went, but the real kind of learning will be, when you actually have to build your own site. It doesn't have to be your site, it could be a client's site, and that's probably a better way of getting started. I find, when I'm in charge of building my own site, I can never make decisions, and I end up kind of like, spending a day and a half in Google Fonts, trying to pick the perfect font, whereas if you got a client you can go, "Well, find what you want," and they can pick it.
 
Now getting your first job can be a little bit tough. One thing I will say is don't do a free job, never works out. I've never done a free job that's ended well. So asking for just minimal, tell them, "Normally it costs $2000, but for you…” - Football club, friend of the family, uncle without a website, - “I will do it for 500, I'll do it for 100." Do for something, there needs to be an exchange. I just find, when you do it for free the expectations are weird. They don't put-- they don't see any value from it, from you, because you've said it's free. And you can't convey that value to them, so what they end up doing is, they go, "Aah yeah, sounds good, good, good," and then, they never send you the copy, they never see your image, they never get back to your emails, and you end up with this like, awkward relationship with your uncle, saying, "Hey, I've got halfway through the website, you never got back to me, I was doing it for free, remember, it was worth $2,000." 

That's, I find even if it's just a small transaction, 50 bucks, and don't start until you get it, and then there's like this, kind of like, you're committed, I'm committed, let's go and do this, and from the other side as well, the person will actually get started, and they'll put it in their head, like this is the thing, and they'll start replying. I just found that's always been the case. So building a website is the very first thing you should do. After you've built a site, or even now you might decide that, to continue your education, you might look at doing, some of the kind of UI design parts of Web Design. 

For this course we had graphics and website mock-ups ready to go. Wireframes we've done, and we just started coding it in Visual Studio Code. So the other process would be, that first part, which is called UI Design, and it's a mixture of UX Design, which we'll talk about in a second. And I've done in software like Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, or Sketch. I've got courses on the first three of those. Look for Photoshop UI, Illustrator UI Design, or XD. You can use anybody's courses but those would be topics that you could go and find a good course on. 

In terms of UI and UX, gets bandied around a little bit. This is like the short explanation of it. The UI is just that kind of mock-up, where the logos are, versus the buttons are, the colors, the fonts. That's considered User Interface. The UX part of it, the User eXperience is, how does a user engage with that UI. Do they scroll down, do they click on which button. How long does it take them to go to a certain particular point, that you want them to get to? Then you do things like tests, this is user experience. You say, "We've moved things around,” does this get them to their goal faster than the first version? And you start doing comparisons, and there's a lot more psychology involved in the UX. 

UI design tends to be a little bit more kind of design related. UX is definitely a little bit more, marketing/psychology, it's quite exciting. I've got a specific course on becoming a UX designer, if that interests you as well. There's other courses out there, but that might be your next step after building a site. What else can you do? You can follow me on social media. There'll be some links here, but on Instagram I'll be bringyourownlaptop, and on Twitter I will be, I am always danlovesadobe. Facebook, join the group. It's the bringyourownlaptoponline, search for that group. It's a kind of a members only one. So if you've heard this video you're a member, because you made it to the end. Ask to be requested in there, and post your stuff. Ask your questions, help other people answer questions. That's the social media stuff. 

Last but not least, it is referrals. I don't expect you to like post it all over your social media, but if you know somebody, you're like, “Yeah, that will get Dan's Card Deck humor, and enjoy his teaching style,” and kind of appreciate, maybe his Web Design course. I'd love for you to share it with them, mainly with the people that care. That is what I would like, helps me keep doing what I'm doing. And that is going to be it. We all hope we never see that sliding meat yogurt carousel slider going ever again. I know, I do. 

And that is going to be it. I never know what to end with, I'm going to keep waving, and we fade to black, but how about, editor, this time, we don't fade to black, we fade to tomato. That's a bit, probably murderish. Let's try again, let's go for, what was it, Spring green. All right, see you later, bye.