It’s been almost two weeks since we finished the web design course. The final weeks were crazy but I now feel that I‘ve gained some perspective and would like to say a few words.
I didn’t know what to expect going into the web design course. I started doing design 5 years ago, so I knew that for me this wouldn’t be about learning the basics. I have noticed that some people have commented on the course description which states that no knowledge of HTML is required for this course. Although that may technically be true, I do think that it should say that some (X)HTML and CSS knowledge is an advantage, but not required. I know that people who took this course with no coding experience did feel a little lost. It’s just something that does not happen overnight. I still remember those first steps very well. And no matter how many books you read, you still won’t "learn" design, or web design in a month or two. Web design is a learning-by-doing experience. It was a pity that there were no introductory lectures in HTML, I mean something more extensive besides that one lecture that was offered. No, I personally did not have any interest in it, but I would have had I been completely new to web design, especially since CSS design is a major part of this course. CSS is easy enough on the very basic stage, but a few classes would have been helpful once you hit the barrier where nothing is working anymore. We had one HTML and one CSS class within the total of 9 lectures. Both were rather about theoretical technicalities. Fine with me, but what did the beginners get out of it? I would not mind lectures throughout the semester, but maybe it’s just me.
Being a web designer means evolving all the time and trying to keep up with the current standards. I felt like I had gotten rather good at table-design. It was through this course that I discovered CSS design. Don’t get me wrong; I used CSS styled-tables, but CSS Zen Garden opened my eyes to something completely new and fascinating. I also got the CSS Zen book, which explains the philosophy of CSS design and shows you certain aspects of csszengarden.com. My goal became to switch from tables to full-CSS. It was hard at first, but once I got over the bump it all worked out very well. I achieved my goal and was quite happy with the result of the group project, even though I had only about 4 weeks to do it.
Another big part of this course was looking and web pages and analyzing them. I have to say that I did not know what I was doing at first. We looked at what different pages are trying to communicate and how they are made. Who is behind them? Who is the intended reader? And so on. I am very critical of web pages but then again, web design is so subjective. What analyzing web pages has taught me is that I have to be more aware of what I am doing and the way I choose to do things. Does my work fit its purpose? What do I want to communicate to the reader? Who am I making this page for? Also, through looking at various pages I would have otherwise never encountered had it not been for this course, I learned how each page is, in its own way, a story. A digital story, if you will. It’s not just the physical text that makes out story, but all the elements on a web page; graphics, navigation, etc.
Blogging, another big part of the web design course. On several occasions I had asked myself, should I maybe start a diary? But what’s point of writing to myself? And maybe I would find my diary in 20 years and go "oh, that’s what I did that day". Yay… I’m not much of a writer either, at least not a diary writer. Blogging wasn’t too appealing either, really. I had seen big, extensive, wonderful blogs that had loads of comments under each post. That seemed liked a great thing to have and run, but what was I to do with my little, insignificant dot of a blog? There are 11 million blog today. As it turns out, just like with life, it’s what you make of it. All of a sudden traffic increased significantly. I made a post about that gang from the hit TV-show Friends coming back together for a movie. All of sudden people googleing for Matthew Perry found their way onto my blog. Having a blog is like having a diary in the 4th dimension. Sky is the limit, you can do anything with it, and your blog becomes a part of something greater, a whole community. I didn’t realize it before, but web design is not only about making your own web page, but also understanding how the web works and knowing (or at least knowing of) different aspects of the web and its functions. Although it is not technically necessary for the part of designing a page, it does help in a wider sense. It’s all connected somehow.
It’s been really great to be able to take this really inspiring course just for the fun of it, even though it has nothing to do with what I do. I’m off to medical school in the fall. I just may set up some sort of medical blog. The life of a medical student, hmm. I have a few other ideas too but I’ll have to see how things work out. Thanks for reading this, and comments are always welcome!
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