Unlike law or medicine, the profession of web design lacks a specific, defined career path to success. Follow these steps, and develop a paying client base. (This article assumes you have, or will acquire, the technical skills necessary to design web pages.)
Step 1: Build a "Resume Web Page" that Impresses Clients, not other Designers
The first and most important site in your portfolio is your own. Don't put this off: many of the designs you complete in order to do steps 2-5 will link back to this webpage. As a web designer, you don't necessarily hand out a resume, you will always hand out a link to a resume web page-a web page that will showcase your skills as a web designer, a web page that persuades a client to decide to pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of this next point: design for an ordinary person, not other designers. Ask your parents or non-geek friends what they think of your designs. Professional web designers have somewhat cultivated, unique tastes that differ from the tastes of the people to whom you will be pitching your design skills.
Your showcase webpage should ideally:
- Be a functional webpage that a small business owner would feel is not overly flowery or unprofessional;
- Should avoid trends that the average business owner might not have the background necessary to appreciate, like minimalist web designs;
- Contain a "contact me" link;
- Contain a link to different WebPages in your portfolio. A link to "examples to my work" is better than a link to "my portfolio": a surprising number of clients may not understand the concept of a web design portfolio!
Step 2: Develop a Professional Portfolio by Submitting Your Work to Third-Party Websites
Once you have an appropriate web page, develop a portfolio by submitting pages to websites that distribute web design templates, often for free.
Submitting your designs to these pages affords you two main benefits:
- Usually, the designer is permitted to leave a discrete link back to his webpage. The link shouldn't be too obvious, and should ordinarily be located at the bottom of the page, next to the copyright information. This allows anyone impressed with your design to easily locate you-and offer to buy your work. This will also improve the ranking of your search engine.
- Once your themes are in use, you can link to them from your portfolio, and even tell prospective clients that your work has been used in literally dozens or hundreds of websites. If an end-user modifies your work, be sure to mention that fact.
So, where exactly should you submit your work? Here are some reasonably busy websites that will garner your work some attention:
- Free Site Templates: A good collection of workman-like websites that ordinary, paying clients might find impressive. Includes websites for: Web Hosting, Education, Industrial, and Café and Restaurants.
- Free CSS: Has the highest standards, features CSS showcase templates. But these templates aren't so ‘artsy' that a client would think them to be useless.
- Template Navigator: Allows you to link to your website, where you make the download available to visitors.
Content Management Systems
An often overlooked means of building a portfolio is by offering a web design for use with any of the various Content Management Systems. Most CMS systems have an active user base eager to use your free theme-and willing to properly credit you with a link.
For instance, Joomla's forums offer links to free website themes that are customized for Joomla. And, there are innumerable galleries offering free Wordpress themes. A successful WordPress theme can be used by hundreds of people, or more. A good example is wpthemesfree.com, which gladly accepts submissions from designers looking to make a name for themselves and build up a portfolio.
Step 3: Website Showcases: Websites about Websites
Website showcases are websites about websites. Typically, they feature screenshots of particularly good web designs, which designers review for inspiration and education. Some showcases feature hundreds of websites.
Potential clients are impressed when they learn that your web designs have been featured in a website showcase. They don't need to know how easy it is-some showcases will feature just about any reasonably well-designed website.
Here are some showcase websites that are willing to consider new designers, and which are not unreasonably selective. Click on the "submit" menu option to submit your design. It takes no more than 30 seconds, and the worst that can happen is that your website will be rejected.
A more comprehensive resource is CSS Gallery List. It contains links to many top CSS galleries'' submission pages. You can send your work all over the internet in only half an hour!
