1. Visual Design
It might seems obvious that you need web design knowledge to be a web designer, but what exactly does that mean? Well, web design is actually a subset of the larger field of visual design, so it makes sense to start there. Let’s take a look at the web design requirements.
Web Design requirements are what determine the look and feel of a site. They can range from proportions, to typography, to grid systems, to color theory. Learning visual design means creating mood boards and type hierarchy and experimenting with web fonts and color palettes.
2. UX Web Design Requirements
Above all else, UX is about approaching your designs from a user-first perspective — how can you design a website that helps them get exactly what they need?
To do that, you’ll research your users and create “personas” (profiles of imaginary ideal users). You’ll lay out the pages and content with a site map. You’ll figure out the path users take on your site in user flows. (For example, do they always click straight through to social media? Or are they just looking for contact information?) And you’ll build wireframes to sketch out the key parts of each webpage. All of these components are essential to practicing user experience design and it is a key web design requirement.
3. DESIGN SOFTWARE
Like any craftsperson, to do your work you need the right tools. Knowing your way around the industry standards will be helpful in every case and critical in many. While designing a website can be done right in a web browser, tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch are ones that almost all designers use for important parts of their job like creating mockups, designing assets (think logos and images), and of course modifying and enhancing photos.
4. HTML Web Design Requirements
You might not have imagined that a web designer would need to know how to code, but this is a web design requirement. But nowadays it’s an expected skill for most design jobs. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, which is the coding language used to put content on a web page and give it structure. That means it’s how you turn a bunch of words into headlines, paragraphs, and footers. And it’s also how you get the “cool” content like photos, videos, and graphics on a website.
5. SEO/Digital Marketing/Social Media
The skill set of SEO (search engine optimization), digital marketing, and social media might seem like it’s meant more for a marketer or salesperson than a web designer. But, since the Internet is the way so many companies sell today, you should wrap your head around them as it is a web design requirement. Even knowing the basics of each and keeping them in mind for both client and your own sites will get you a long way in your web designer journey.
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