Am I too old to be a web-designer?
Even with talent, passion and ambition in web design, many individuals chose what they assumed to be a more stable career path in their earlier life stages. And now they look back at their life, starting to wonder if they have already missed the boat. Maybe this the story of your life. The answer to this question is: you’re never too old for anything.
If you have a true passion for web design, you’ll likely find your way back to it at some point of your life. You may have your doubts when weighting the pros and cons of investing in the development of new web design skills, but this shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your passion. Many successful designers, career-changers, and entrepreneurs established their career path at an age that’s considered old in the traditional perspective. You are only as old as you feel; you can be 20 years old but repel changes and new ideas at heart, or be 50 years old and always embrace challenges and keep up with new technologies. It’s up to you to decide how old you want to appear in the public eye.
How do I beat the younger candidates in job interviews?
Many older workers worry about being beaten by younger competitors during job interviews. Here’s how you win at interviews against the younger minds: during interviews, let your strengths shine over your weaknesses. If your past experiences are outdated, don’t mention the start and end date. If you don’t have much experience in design, don’t bring up what you’re missing, address the abilities you’ve already acquired and are willing to achieve instead. Focus on your advantages, such as your other relative experiences, your dedication and your enthusiasm.
Don’t make the assumption that your age disqualifies you. Many employers and clients prefer working with someone who’s more stable, mature, and experienced in life. Use this as leverage to make yourself the winning candidate. If you’re concerned that the interviewers will assume you as outdated and non-tech-savvy, cross those assumptions as early as possible in the way you present yourself. If possible, create an well-designed and modern-looking portfolio to display graphic and web design work you have done in the past; this could be a collection of team projects you’ve done at night school, home work projects from your career training workshops, or test projects you assigned yourself for practice. You need to craft a resume that highlights your strongest skills and relevant accomplishments only. Use the interview as your stage of talent exhibition and reflect your creativity in your communications.
How do I keep my skills up-to-date?
First of all, you need to be familiar with the entire design process, from colour, flow, to balance, proportion, and spacing. To stay up-to-date in the web design community that is mainly dominated by younger professionals, you need to maintain a sharp eye for colour, typography, and the perfect layout of website. In order to have a good sense of design, you need to learn to recognize a good design from a bad one. Start your day by going through the most recent design portfolios and examining the work of experienced designers. Study well-designed pieces and analyze which element made this design stand out. Focus on specific design elements such as navigation bars, search fields, buttons, fonts and compare them with other examples. Think about the reason why certain decisions were made on this website. At the end of this process, sketch your own ideas; this will help you absorb the essence of good designs and avoid common mistakes some designers often make.
Second of all, you need to master HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You need to know them like the back of your hand. These are the basic framework of all pages on the Web, a designer should be knowledgeable about these in order to design with more purpose and attention to usability. There are many online sources such as CodePen, Codecademy, HTMLdog, and W3schools, which you could use to update your coding knowledge. There are also websites such as Lynda and Youtube that offers a great deal of tutorials to help you learn the most recent web design techniques.
Last but not least, you need a sandbox where you can practice your skills. Create a place for yourself where you can try new techniques; this could be your own website or a personal projects that you created. Treat your sandbox as an experiment and don’t be afraid of using bold layouts or colors. Don’t settle with the first idea that comes to your mind. This is your own playground, have some fun with it and be creative! Especially if you’re new to wen design, these practice projects can be really helpful in building your own portfolio.
As the largest career college in Canada with 50 campuses across the country, Academy of Learning College attributes the growth in our success to identifying the gap between the formal education available and the realities of the working world. We offer Web Design programs in Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, in which we provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge to build a Web Design foundation, learn industry-standard software programs, and produce a well-rounded and dynamic portfolio. Browse our program list by province and find the best program that suits your needs!