Web Designer – Expectations Vs. Reality

Web Designer – Expectations Vs. Reality

When it comes to careers, the expectations do not always match the reality. This is true now more than ever as the number of people shifting careers hits record highs. Below is a breakdown of what most people getting into web design expect, and what the reality is on the ground.

It is not that hard

Web design is not that hard. In fact, it is among the professions that anyone can learn on their own and go on to carve an illustrious career. Incidentally, the majority of people think of it as a very hard line of work – probably, due to the intimidating nature of ununderstood programming languages. Many are pleasantly surprised to discover that things are not as hard as they seem.

Thinking that it is all about code

When designers get into the profession, they wrongly perceive that the majority of time will be spent writing code, and tackling nerdy tasks. Consequently, in their training, they focus a lot on these things, trying to master the different languages and find evergreen sources of inspiration to stand out from the crowd.

While these things are core to the job, the human aspect is just as important. A designer may come up with a neat design, which meets all the steepest thresholds from a designer’s perspective, but he/she soon finds out that ultimately, it is all about what the client thinks.

The convincing aspect

As a result, one needs a lot of convincing power to be a web designer. More than once, it will be necessary to bring clients round to liking a job. This part of the profession can be frustrating, but obviously, without it, there will be no money to pay for the projects.

Upcoming designers who appreciate this fact and want to steer clear of it gravitate towards working under someone who will take care of the human aspects of the job so that they can focus on design only. But even then, quite often, such designers still find it necessary to convince their superiors concerning different aspects of a project. In a nutshell, due to nerdy nature of design, many underestimate the importance of the needed social skills – which are of absolute importance to truly succeed in the field.

Rejection

Rejection is a part of the job, but this is hardly ever highlighted in school, camps, or other forms of training. Sometimes, a seemingly simple project may actualize so much frustration in the name of corrections and alterations, that at the point of success, one is just an inch shy of quitting the project altogether.

In other cases, things fail to work out, and a designer wastes time on a project that eventually gets binned. The ray of light, however, is that as one accumulates experience, it becomes easier to know the channels to follow to minimize rejection.

The money factor

Not everyone has the financial backing to purchase the best quality. A designer may have the perfect solution for a client, but usually, the budget becomes an impeding factor. Most designers expect the freedom to deliver the very best, but in this light, their expectations are sometimes cut off. When starting out, many do not appreciate just how big a factor finances are in design projects.

Timelines

Burning with passion and looking forward to tackling exciting projects, newcomers never expect that at some point, timelines and looming deadlines may pose a challenge. In actual sense, the opposite is true.

With passion, comes the tendency to propose project completion within unrealistic periods. Consequently, overambitious designers quickly find themselves struggling with deadlines and tight schedules. This is the reason why many projects grapple with missed release dates – particularly video games.

Overestimating the income

In many lines of work, this is usually the first expectation that gets crushed, and web-design is not an exception. As a good web designer, with a decent flow of work, it is fairly easy to make a good living, but inasmuch as this is so, the income is still not as high as many newcomers expect. This has led to diversification where designers offer many other affiliated services such as PPC and social media marketing.

The challenges

No one loves challenges, and for this reason, it is human nature to remain unrealistically optimistic. In web design, this happens a lot as many people underestimate what it will take to rise to the pinnacle in the profession.

In truth, sometimes, everything that can go wrong goes wrong and it is during such times that one’s mettle is tested. To have an easier time, it becomes crucial to prepare for both favorable and unfavorable eventualities mentally. To help out, there are excellent resources on bitgale.com and other insightful websites.

Balancing the expectation vs. reality equation is only a matter of mental adjustment. Once that is accomplished, one can look forward to a higher degree of professional joy and diminished disappointments upon joining the industry. In closing, it is always better to expect less and get more, than get less while expecting more.