What I love about the web design field is that it doesn’t require any special certifications, formal education or any other traditional qualifiers. Everyone who has ever decided to start a career as a web designer has probably taken a different path to get there. The route I followed to get where I am today is unique to my life choices and circumstances. So it would be ridiculous to say that there is a preferred path or that one way will work better than another.

The great thing about it all is this: you get to choose the path! However you get there, here are some tips that might help along the way.

Read

Read everything about design/development that you can get your hands on. This is where it starts. We are fortunate, in this profession, that there is so much information available and that there are so many generous folks out there willing to share what they know for free. Read design magazines. Read tutorials and how-tos. Read some design books. The sources are virtually unlimited — you just have to want the knowledge enough and take the time to go get it.

Listen

I think I’ve mentioned before how hearing Jeffrey Zeldman speak at Web Design World in Boston in 2002 changed my whole perspective on web design and subsequently kicked my career into gear. If you’ve never been to a design conference, do yourself a favor and sign up for one. It really can change your life. I would highly recommend one of the An Event Apart conferences.

Practice

Publilius Syrus, a 1st Century Roman author said, “Practice is the best of all instructors.” This is probably the most important part of the journey to become a successful web designer. Like any worthwhile endeavor, if you want to get better at it, you have to practice. If you want to become a web designer, then just start doing it.

I started off by looking at the code of other designers to see how they achieved certain effects. I spent a lot of time copying/pasting and deconstructing other designers’ websites. I’ve also spent countless hours pouring over my own HTML or CSS code trying to perfect just the right look. It all takes time — and lots of practice.

So that’s pretty much it. There are many ways to get there, but if you want it bad enough, then reading, listening and practicing will be your loyal companions along the way.

Where’s my spaceship?

When I was a kid — maybe 10 or 11 years old back in the mid ’80s — I would fantasize about the future. I thought that the year 2010 was almost unseeable. Were we lucky enough to make it that far, there were two things I was sure I’d have: a flying car/spaceship and a jet-pack.

Needless to say I have neither of those items today. Its funny how technology has advanced in ways a kid like me would never have thought about. I may not have a jet-pack, but I do have an iphone, a Macbook Pro connected wirelessly to the internet and a DVR connected to my TV. Who woulda thunk it?

Looking Forward

I’m usually not the type to set major goals for the year, as I like to see how things turn out without a lot of over planning.

However, I would like to document a couple things I’d like to do this year.

• Write a book with my son. Actually, he wants to write it, I’m going to illustrate it. Should be fun - more details later.
• Develop my own HTML/CSS framework. Instead of starting over every time I create a new site, I need to have a “site starter” of common elements and basic CSS (grid infused) to jump start the development process. Maybe I’m make it available for download, maybe I won’t. We’ll see how it turns out.
• Master Javascript/jQuery. Jared Christensen says that “JavaScript is still a black box to me. A sexy,
  enticing black box which I will one day unwrap.” I have felt the same way for a long time. This is the year I unwrap that box.
• Read 25 books. I’ve tried reading 25 for the past couple of years. Twenty-one in 2008 and only 17 in 2009. Here’s the list I’ve compiled so far for 2010 on Readernaut. Never hurts to try, eh?

So that’s what the future holds for me this year. That and a whole lot of other things I can’t even imagine at this point. And I’m looking forward to every minute!

Embrace Web Standards, my friends!

In our family, we’re thankful every day all year round. But when Thanksgiving comes along, it does allow for a bit of extra thankfulness, no? Without further ado, the following are things I’m particularly thankful for this year:

God and His Providence, my wife, my son, my other son, my daughter, my brother and his wife, my mom, my wife’s parents, my nieces, family, good friends, twitter pals, our house, working from home, a job that pays me to do what I love, good books, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, my iMac, my iphone, future opportunities, football, my DVR, Adobe Fireworks, iced tea, swimming pool, dependable vehicles, clean water, my hammock, basketball, free thought, WordPress, Coda, MAMP, Quicksilver, homemade salsa, downtime, learning from mistakes, good health, Market Street, family movie night, socks without holes, a full pantry, ALMI, Chuy’s, raking leaves and the sounds of my kids playing in the other room.

Are you interested in learning more about Fireworks? Maybe you’re a seasoned Fireworks designer looking for some new tips and tricks. You could be a Photoshop lifer and have been wondering what all the fuss is about Fireworks. Or perhaps you’re just starting out in the design world and want to learn more about this popular design tool.

Regardless of your background, experience, or design tool preference, chances are you’ll learn something new.

I’ll talk a bit about my background and how I settled on Fireworks as my tool of choice. I’ll also share some general design fundamentals that I’ve learned over the years. Last, but not least, I’ll demonstrate some handy Fireworks techniques and show how to create some common web artifacts.

I’ll also have some free copies of Foundation Fireworks available. Come check it out!

The Details

Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009
Time: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Venue: New Horizons Computer Learning Center
Map: 5151 Beltline Road in Dallas

I love this book! Handcrafted CSS is full of Web design gold. Dan goes on to say:

“Often the decisions we make as designers and design implementers directly reflect the integrity of the interface. What happens if there is more (or less) content on the page than planned? What happens if the text size of the page increases or decreases? What happens if there are two paragraphs instead of one? And what if one of those paragaphs is translated into, say, German?

Flexibility in Web design is the mark of a true craftsman. Designing something statically in an image editor is one achievement, but allowing for give and take within the boundaries of a page layout is what sets good Web design apart from great Web design. It’s taking the Web as a medium into account as part of the design process, and letting go of pixel precision.”

One of my old bosses and design mentors earlier in my career used to say this exact same thing all the time. “What if this changes” was a question he was always asking me, challenging me to ensure that what I was designing was flexible. I’m thankful for that early mentoring. If you’re a designer or front-end developer, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of this book.

The morning of September 11, 2001 was a pretty busy morning for me. I woke up super early and went to work to get a good start on a top priority project I was working on. I arrived at the office a couple of hours before sunrise. At that time, I was working in downtown Dallas at a mortgage company. As the Communications Manager, one of my jobs was to create corporate presentations, usually delivered by the CEO or other executive.

PowerPoint was my trusted tool of choice at that time, but since this particular presentation was so important, I decided to use a new way of creating and delivering presentations - Macromedia Flash!

So I was knee-deep in Flash - fiddling with keyframes and motion tweens - listening to Third Day blare through my headphones throughout the morning. I barely noticed the lights switching on and the slow trickle of coworkers filtering into the other cubicles around me.

I don’t remember the exact time, but my friend Bob, who sat in the cubicle behind me tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I took off the headphones and he said, “A plane just hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.” I asked him what kind of plane and he said he didn’t know. I put my headphones back on and got back to work. While I was working, I thought to myself, “What kind of idiot would fly a plane into a tower that large, thinking it was a small private plane of some sort.” I also remember wondering how many people could have been injured and hoped everyone was ok.

About 10 or 15 minutes later, Bob tapped me on the shoulder again and said, “Another plane just hit the other tower.”

At this point, I put the headphones down completely and called my wife, who was 8 months pregnant with our second child. She was at a doctor’s visit and was watching it all on the TV in the waiting room. She was pretty distraught about it all and I remember hoping that this would not induce an early labor.

From that point forward, my day was pretty much like everyone else’s. We spent most of the day watching CNN on the large screens in nearby conference rooms. I thought for sure we would all be sent home, especially since we were in one of the taller buildings in Dallas, in a very nearly-direct flight path to Love Field. No one was sure if there were more attacks planned.

Looking back, I wish now that I had come straight home, but at the time, I don’t think I even comprehended the enormity of it all. I ended up leaving work early, listening to the radio the whole time. We went to a prayer service at church that night and prayed. I don’t even know what I prayed for. What can you possibly pray for at a time like that?

That was 8 years ago today. This is the first year we have sent our kids to public school, where we have a 5th grader and a 2nd grader there. I sent an email to the 5th grade social studies teacher the other day asking what the school had planned in terms of remembering 911. Here was his response:

“We don’t talk a lot about 9-11 or go into great depth because of people’s different beliefs and feelings related to what happened. In the older grades they do go into more detail because the students are more able to form their own opinions and thoughts about the information presented. I hope that makes sense.”

Make sense? No, that doesn’t make sense! So people’s different beliefs and feelings prevent us from talking about one of the worst catastrophes in our country’s history? Are we also not going to talk about slavery or the Holocaust? I’m sure there are lots of different beliefs and feelings related to those aspects of our checkered past.

I think whatever you tell your kids, either at home or at school, should be age appropriate, for sure. I’m not advocating showing CNN footage of the day’s events to the kids or showing any gory photos of people jumping out of skyscraper windows, but by all means, can’t we find a way to remember the day? Don’t let it go by without acknowledging what happened.

Too many people were killed. Too many heros gave up their lives to save others. Our country has changed too much to let this day go by without doing SOMETHING to remember that awful day.

Don’t forget!

Twitterrific. Loads of great features, easy to use. No complaints at all. I love this app.

ESPN. I can’t remember if this is a downloadable app or just an iPhone-optimized website, but either way its the app I use the most, no question. If you’re into sports and you don’t have this on your iPhone, get it now!

ESPN Scorecenter. What can I say? I’m a sports information junkie!

Byline. Excellent app for reading RSS feeds subscribed to from your Google Reader account. Simple, but elegant.

Super Dial. One-touch dialing for the numbers you call most.

I use every one of these apps every single day. Without them my iPhone experience would be somewhat unfulfilled.

It goes without saying (I hope) that these “can’t live without ‘em” apps are in addition to the ones that come with the phone, like Maps, Safari, Phone, Camera, Mail, Calendar, etc.

What about you? Any apps I should consider adding to my “must have” list? Do tell.

Writing this book was a tremendously educational adventure for me. One thing I learned is that writing a book is a lot harder than I thought would be. I now fully appreciate the amount of effort and time required to write a book - regardless of the subject matter. I’m glad I was able to share the workload with some very talented designers and an outstanding editing team.

The other designers that contributed content were Matt Heerema, Hugh Griffith, Craig Erskine, Matthew Keefe and Grant Hinkson. These are some really talented designers and great authors. Also, the team at Friends of Ed (Apress) were great to work with - very helpful and very patient.

So who is this book for? Here’s an excerpt that sums it up nicely:

Are you a designer looking for a new and quicker way to prototype and create for the Web? Or are you perhaps a web developer who finds most design tools to be overly complex for what you need to get done? In either case, productivity is key, and Fireworks is Adobe’s Creative Suite web productivity tool of choice. So even if you’re an experienced Fireworks pro who wants to keep up to date on the latest additions to Creative Suite 4, Foundation Fireworks CS4 will show you how to get the most out of Fireworks so that you maximize your efficiency without sacrificing any creativity or power.

You can learn more about the book from the Friends of Ed site here. And, if you’re interested, you can buy the book on Amazon here.