How To Learn Web Designing From Basics
If you are eager to learn about web designing basics, you should start right away. Just remember the number of times that you have selected the best design firms and promised yourself that you would be doing a course and start your business.
Well, it is high time that you gear up and make a go for it! “How to learn web designing from basics?” is a question that many web designers ask.
Self is the best teacher. Keep close contact with friends who are website owners and developers that can give you valuable insights on web designing. There are innumerable tutorials available on the net, and a number of books written by famous authors on web designing.
Without further ado, let’s take a quick look at ten easy ways of brushing up your web designing basics!
How To Learn Web Designing From Basics
1. Read, read and read
Your voracious reading habits might help you in this case. Keep your eyes and ears open for the latest trends in web designing. You can gain a lot of knowledge from reading articles on the web, or downloading PDFs or other study materials.
There are offline resources available too to lay your hands on. Contact a friend who knows plenty about web designing and see if your friend has any other books or tutorial CDs they can lend you to read or watch. Paperbacks on web designing courses are also available.
2. Open a website
Many think about the high cost involved in opening a website, but nowadays there are free online website-building services, like Wix, available that you can make use of—premium versions of Wix are also available.
For beginners, a simple website with ordinary concepts and building blocks would be sufficient. A website of a simplistic nature and design would allow you to get familiar with basics.
Remember, if your basic fundamentals are strong, you would be able to develop excellent website building skills later on in your career.
3. Tuts+ and Envato Elements
Never heard of Envato elements? Well, now, you will. Starting from the simplest techniques of graphics and web designing to the advanced levels of development—everything is offered by Envato elements.
Here you will get an array of plug-ins and templates, as well as a bunch of useful tutorials taught by experts. Envato Elements also gives you access to some really dependable Tuts+ study resources.
4. Eat and sleep HTML and CSS
Now that you have decided you are going to spend quality time learning website designing, why not start speaking the HTML Language?
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language that is one of the fundamentals of website designing. HTML, in other words, is a skeleton on which the structure of a website is erected.
If you can gain expertise in HTML quickly, the rest of the learning process would prove to be much easier and more interesting for you. Play around and familiarize with some starter tutorials on HTML online.
CSS is a buddy of HTML. It stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and it helps to present a document that has been written in HTML, SVG or XML. Mozilla provides some CSS learning tutorials and study materials starting from basic to advanced levels.
5. Programming languages
CodeAcademy provides a number of tutorials on several programming languages. The first step would require you to learn about interactive games and other activities. Just imagine what a great start that would be for beginners!
CodeAcademy courses include the following programming languages—HTML, CSS, Java, SQL, Python and Ruby, among others. You can also learn about how to design and develop websites on this educational platform.
You can check the courses for free to see if they fit your requirements, and start and end whenever you wish, according to your availability.
6. Research
While browsing, have you come across certain websites that are so attractive and well-planned that you instantly fell in love with them? Take your notebook out and scribble down the features that you like most about these websites.
Pay attention to these features, especially—navigation, typography, use of images, design, color, font, and animation, among other things.
7. Go Wireframing!
When designers brainstorm, it is called wireframing. It is the blueprint of the website encompassing every element, to the dot, concerning the website’s structure.
Wireframes could be simply hand-drawn, or there are software programs, like Microsoft’s Visio, that you can use for on-screen project delivery to clients or stakeholders.
However, if the wireframe products are going to be used for a prototype usability test, then it should be made using HTML. Software programs like Azure RP or Omniegraffle could be used for this purpose.
8. Technology Updates
If you own a website, there are certain cyber technologies that you need to know about. Examples would include AI, VR, 360-degree videos, and bots, to name a few.
If you have an “online chat” website, then keep yourself updated on bots. Artificial intelligence and augmented reality are gaining popularity day by day and are picking up speed at innovation and utilization.
9. Join the CodePen Community
Once you have tried your hand in learning about website designing and programming languages, why not attempt at coding? If you are interested, join the CodePen Community where like-minded coders get together and share coded snippets for editing.
This website allows full freedom to make mistakes while learning from it and focuses mainly on the front-end languages like CSS, HTML, Preprocessing Syntaxes, and Java Script.
10. Try UI kit and Typography
Download a UI or User Interface and pick it apart to understand the basics. Separate all the design elements of the web into bits and pieces, take notes, point out the color mixes, and locate the scales and grids.
Also, see how Photoshop and Illustrators organize files inside them. After you have picked a UI apart, why not customize one of your own?
Learning Typography could be another area to focus on. Starting from headers to layers of text that pull the audience to the website--gaining expertise on typography would surely lift you to the top of your game.
Try out the book, “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton. She will make you think like a typographer in no time.
Final Words
Getting yourself involved in ways on how to learn web designing from basics could help you immensely in career tracks such as web-development or freelancing. Learning to design websites is a lucrative industry, and you will not regret trying your hand in it.