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Episode 151: How to Get Started as a Website Designer
704 Plays2 years ago
Interested in getting started as a website designer? In this episode, Davey & Krista cover everything from learning the skills to building a portfolio and finding clients. This episode is jammed packed with practical considerations for getting started in web design.
If you’re interested in getting started as a website designer and you’re looking for some additional direction, send us an email. Krista is currently putting together a course on how to get started, and we’re looking for beta-testers so that we can perfect the content.
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Transcript
The Essence of Design in Website Creation
00:00:05
Speaker
I think that the strongest designers understand design and whereas I feel like so many contemporary website teachers and courses, they focus on the building aspect and they completely ignore the design aspect, so focusing on color layout. And I think that websites are so much stronger when you start with the design aspect.
Introducing 'Brands That Book Show'
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones. Krista joins me today to discuss how to get started as a website designer.
Beginnings in Website Design with Krista
00:00:41
Speaker
And it's a topic that I wanted her to share more about for a long time now, so I'm excited that it's actually happening and that we found some time to record this episode. This episode is jam-packed with practical considerations for getting started in website design.
00:00:56
Speaker
And if you're interested in getting started as a website designer and you're looking for some additional direction, send us an email because Krista is currently working on putting together a course on how to get started as a website designer. And we're looking for beta testers so that we can perfect the content.
00:01:13
Speaker
As always, be sure to check out the show notes at dvandchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode. We want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Branso Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at dvandchrista. Now, onto the episode.
Basics of Starting as a Website Designer
00:01:34
Speaker
All right, we are back. Another episode of the Brands at Book podcast. Krista is joining me this morning and today we're chatting about a subject that I've been trying to convince Krista to chat more about for a long, long time. I know. I don't think I've ever talked about this on our podcast. I know that Christmas truck was on and you guys talked about this topic or similar topic.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah. So just to clue everybody in, we are talking about how to get started as a website designer. So if you're interested in website design, this is a great episode to get started with. It has been chatted about a little bit on the podcast. So who have I had on, I've had Bonnie on to talk about website design, maybe pricing when it comes to website design. Right. I've had so many episodes now.
00:02:16
Speaker
Yeah, Chris Mistrick has come on and he's talked about maybe how to get started as a website designer, or at least his journey. Or maybe freelancing, maybe focusing on freelancing. Yeah, focusing on freelancing. So there's been a few topics, but I've been trying to get Chris to talk about this for a while. So finally, here we are. Here we are.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, and hopefully, and a few other exciting announcements coming along along those lines. But today, we're going to dig into the basics of how to get started as a website designer. We've had people submit questions, which is always helpful. And some of the episodes we record live, but even the episodes we don't, we often post in our Facebook group, the topics that are coming up, and it's always so nice when people submit questions.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yes. I don't often ask questions, at least on social media, and I was surprised by how many I received on this topic. So I'm excited to dive into it. Yeah, absolutely. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through sort of just kind of an outline of getting started as a website designer, and I'll have some questions for you. And then we'll dig into questions from people who submitted them. Right. All right. How does that sound? That sounds like a plan.
00:03:19
Speaker
All right, awesome. So first things first, I guess we should start just about business
Setting Up a Design Business
00:03:24
Speaker
setup. And I don't want to spend a ton of time here. One, because I think, you know, as you're setting up a business, you know, you need to figure out, you need to talk to a lawyer, things like that.
00:03:33
Speaker
Totally. I do think though that I want to start here because before you dive into this journey, it's really helpful to think about whether you want your goal is to have your own business or if your goal is to work for a company. Because if you want to work for a company, you might be learning some different systems, then you would learn if you're going to do it yourself. If you're going to do it yourself and run your own company, you can choose any platforms. You can really kind of learn as you want.
00:03:59
Speaker
But especially if you have a specific company in mind that you want to work for, you probably want to use the systems and tools that they're using.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So you want to do some research at the outset, maybe some companies that you like and figuring out what platforms they build on, you know, what coding languages they use and really focus your time and energy there. That makes a lot of sense. I think at the outset though, you know, having a website, having some social handles, you know, even if you are trying to get hired by somebody else, sort of the beginning I think looks similar, right? Oh yeah. I mean, we hired our designers, we looked at their portfolios on their websites.
00:04:36
Speaker
I think it's a lot easier to view somebody's work, especially a website on an actual website, whereas I've also had people send PDFs of their work, and you just don't get to experience a website when you're seeing screenshots of it in a PDF. Yeah, so even if you are trying to get hired, having your own website, having social handles, I think is a good idea. And to your point, it's hard. You can go through somebody's resume, but at the end of the day, you kind of want to see that they can actually design a website and that it functions well.
00:05:04
Speaker
Right, so thinking about if you're going to name your business or if it's just going to be your name and any of the registration and legal aspects that you need to form a company, if you're going to form a company.
Choosing Business Names and Domains
00:05:14
Speaker
And then thinking about your website domain and then ideally matching social media handles. I would say that if you can't get a simple domain for your business, then you might consider a different business name.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And figuring out if the domain available is a good first step in figuring out, you know, maybe whether that business name is trademarked or not. But of course you should always do the trademark search. Again, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds here. I think we should also record a separate episode on choosing a business name. You know, just a few considerations there as well. Whether you should go with something that's more personal branded or a company
Understanding Design Principles
00:05:49
Speaker
name. I think starting out, if you don't know, but you just need to get started, grabbing a URL, that is your name or some version of your name.
00:05:57
Speaker
We already have URLs for our kids' names. Yeah, exactly. It's just a good idea because you can always change it from there, but I think it's harder going from some name that you choose in the moment that gets dated and switching from that. I agree. So anyways, just some, I guess, basic advice there. But to get to your point,
00:06:17
Speaker
All right, about what systems and programs that you're learning. I think that's really, you know, kind of as people are getting started, what they want to know, right? So should we talk about choosing a platform first and then working back from there?
00:06:32
Speaker
No, I feel like people need to learn the principles of design first. I think that the strongest designers understand design. And whereas I feel like so many contemporary website teachers and courses, they focus on the building aspect and they completely ignore the design aspect. So focusing on color layout. And I think that websites are so much stronger when you start with the design aspect, but I also am a designer at heart. So maybe that's just my personal bias.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah,
Evolution of Website Building Roles
00:07:03
Speaker
sure. I mean, I guess now before we get too deep into things as well, it's maybe good to have a quick discussion about designing versus developing and maybe a little bit of how those lines have blurred with the rise of website builders like show it Squarespace Wix, right where you don't really need to know a lot of development.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, when I was thinking through this podcast, I have that in a later point. But when I was in design school and first learning how to build websites, I learned how to do the mock-up and then I learned how to slice up that design and then completely design everything in code in HTML. So you used to have people who just focused on the design aspect and then you used to have developers who turned that design into code. And so they used CSS to add background colors and
00:07:51
Speaker
sliced up images and all sorts of things. These days there are so many different website builders that make it easy to make a design to bring it to life and you don't need very much code. I would say that 98% of what I do these days does not require code and if I am using code it's typically CSS and that's to override some other settings that can't be done just in the standard editor.
00:08:15
Speaker
Okay, so, you know, kind of backing up here and kind of looking at what's before us, we have a few decisions to make here. You would say of the most important, maybe not to least important, but less important things, right? Learning the principles of design, you would wait really heavily, right? Okay, so learning the principles of design, that's going to include things like what?
00:08:37
Speaker
That's going to include learning layout and composition, color theory, how to add texture to a design, the rules of typography, which I cannot stress enough how important typography is. I think that typography can just make or break a website, and there are so many rules about good type and how to properly do type. There's just a lot to learn there.
00:09:00
Speaker
and then also understanding imagery and how different images are gonna convey different feelings, what kind of images to use in certain spots and so forth.
00:09:09
Speaker
Okay, awesome. So that's kind of an overview of the principles of design. And maybe we'll have a minute here to jump into those a little bit, but then kind of backing into code, let's say, just generally, and some of the development knowledge. How important is it to know a coding language, whether it be basic HTML and CSS or something else PHP? What do you think?
00:09:34
Speaker
I don't think it's as critical as it used to be. I do think it's really important to know at least CSS because if you are going to be targeting things to make them look a certain way. So an example is like when we're building a show it site, show it doesn't have any default settings to do things like override some of the font settings in a blog post or maybe change like the color of the submit button within a blog post.
00:10:00
Speaker
you have to do those sorts of things with CSS if you wanted to look a certain way. And so I would say if you don't understand CSS, you're probably going to be googling things and maybe just finding stuff and copying and pasting it. And it's going to just a lot more work to figure out how to do what you want it to do. And you might be adding in extra bits of code that you don't need to actually break other things on the site. So, but when you do understand CSS, you know,
00:10:26
Speaker
All I need to do is target this specific button that has this ID and I just need the background color to be this hex code and then that's all you have to add. So it's much faster and it's a lot less bloated than if you're trying to just play with it. Yeah, I would agree. I think 100% that at the end of the day, especially if you're going to choose a platform like Show It to focus on,
00:10:49
Speaker
you know, understanding some principles of code, you know, or a little bit of code, especially CSS is good, but understanding design in general is going to be one of the most important parts. Right. And who knows, you know, again, not to put the part in front of the horse here, but as your team grows, you might have people on your team who are more developer focused, right, than yourself, which is a good way to kind of round out, I think, a design team, right, as well.
00:11:16
Speaker
All right, so we talked a little bit about the principles of design, the importance of knowing something like HTML and CSS. Should we jump into choosing a platform? Do you want to talk about tools first, just a few basic tools that people might need? I think we talk about platforms first. Okay. And then we jump into those tools. Okay, we can talk about platforms. Because I do, I mean, want to hear your thoughts on this. I do think that in terms of actually building a business,
Essential Tools for a Design Business
00:11:41
Speaker
right?
00:11:41
Speaker
There aren't many tools that you need. Sure. But when it comes to a platform, like it's going to be, this is kind of a crucial question, right? Where you're going to niche down. And we do recommend niching down to a specific platform and really understanding that platform well. So what should people keep in mind in choosing a platform?
00:11:59
Speaker
I think it's really important to keep in mind usability as well as search engine optimization, how much support a platform has. Like there are some platforms that maybe they're great to build on, but their customer support is not so great. And so you're either going to be frustrated with questions or the people that you hand that website off to are going to be frustrated with questions.
00:12:22
Speaker
We've played with a lot of different platforms over the years and we keep coming back to WordPress. WordPress is where I started and it's where I still build websites on WordPress. And then from there on WordPress, we've played with a lot of different builders that you can use to customize a WordPress website on the front end. So that means customizing it without knowing any code and visual drag and drop editors.
00:12:47
Speaker
When I first started again, I used to hand code all of my WordPress websites, which was a lot. But these days, that's not something that is necessary. And so the platforms that we use are Show It and Elementor. Yeah, and so I'd love to talk a little bit about the pros and cons of each. And maybe I could chime in on some of these other website platforms as well, and maybe why we've decided to stay away from them. I will say, I think, you know, for the duration of the time that you've been designing on WordPress, I've had sort of a love-hate relationship with WordPress.
00:13:17
Speaker
Why is that? WordPress is the most used content management
Platform Choices: WordPress vs. Show It
00:13:21
Speaker
system in the world. There is a market for WordPress, which is great. If you're thinking about getting into website design, you don't want to choose some obscure platform that no one designs on or no one's ever heard of. That's going to be difficult for all sorts of reasons. WordPress, there's definitely a market for it. There is a million different ways to build a WordPress website. WordPress is popular for good reason.
00:13:45
Speaker
But at the same time, there are a lot of moving pieces in even using a builder like Elementor, right? There's a lot of different ways that WordPress website can break. And so, you know, I think a certain kind of person does well with WordPress. I'm thinking, you know, just put myself in our client's shoes, right? Well, show it is also a WordPress site. Sure, sure. But show it's a little different. It's a little different. But when I say, I mean, like, I'm grouping show it and WordPress Elementor together versus like Squarespace.
00:14:14
Speaker
Sure. Sure. And that makes a lot of sense. I'm talking specifically about WordPress. Okay. Not with showing in mind right now. Right. And just talking about some of the complexity there. And, you know, when we hand a site off to a client, you know, maybe they know how to use Elementor and can make updates, but they need to remember to do all sorts of other things like update plugins, right? And then inevitably, you're going to have a WordPress update that rolls out.
00:14:34
Speaker
And everything, not everything, but some things will break and you just need to go in and fix them again. Exactly. And you just need to, you know, kind of one by one, deactivate and reactivate plugins, troubleshoot like that. Right. But that said, WordPress Elementor is worth it in a lot of scenarios, especially if somebody is a heavy e-commerce site. Yeah. Or like they need a membership platform or things like that.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah, I 100% agree and obviously our site is on WordPress Elementor. So it's of course a platform that we love, but there is some added complexity there, I think. Right, whereas show it, it's just so easy to make things beautiful.
00:15:11
Speaker
Really? Really it is. With the Show It website, it has a WordPress blog. It does. A lot of those things that we're talking about still apply. People need to remember to update their plugins. They do. But I do think it's just a little bit easier. If you're learning something from scratch, if you're learning websites from scratch, you're going to probably pick up Show It a little faster than you would WordPress.
00:15:30
Speaker
Right, because show it, it's not columns and grids based the way the Elementor is. It's really like I want this black box to be stuck to the side of the screen. So I just select this button and I want this image right here and you just move it right there and it stays right there. It's a lot, it's very similar to the Adobe Creative Suite. So if you're used to Photoshop or Illustrator, you're gonna find there's a lot of crossover between show it and those platforms.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yeah. So anyways, I think both those are platforms that we love and are a good starting point for people, right? The nice thing about the Show-It community, I'm thinking about the user community and the design community and the company itself is that people are helpful, right? So if you have a question and you post in, you know, the Show-It website designers group, like people are going to respectfully answer that question, right?
00:16:22
Speaker
That's not always true in the WordPress more traditional website group world, right? They're not as kind. No, you know, it's a lot of like, again, this is a character chair for sure, but it's a lot of grumpy old men who are like, Oh, I can't believe you're using that plugin. That's going to slow down your way, you know, or whatever. So there's, I feel like you're more likely not to get an answer to your question. And just a lot of people chiming in on how you should do something differently, right?
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah. Whereas with the show it groups, you know, it's much more, you know, people are friendly, people are willing to answer questions and help out. Right. Yeah. If you're going to go the show it route, they recommend they have a lot of great tutorials teaching you how to build a website and show it. And so we'll link to those in the blog post version of this post.
00:17:08
Speaker
They recommend starting with I think it's called their simple template to use as the base if you're gonna start with a website You can also purchase a template from a designer But if you do that, you just want to make sure that you leave there a site credit in the design so you would need to say something like design by David and Krista customized by Bennett Jones or something like that
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that's worth familiarizing yourself with if you're going to get started with ShowIt, their principles or their kind of rules or guidelines for website designers, especially when it comes to crediting people appropriately, right? So anyways, just another word about a few other website platforms, Squarespace, which we've done some design on, Wix as well, which we have much less experience with.
Limitations and Potentials of Platforms
00:17:54
Speaker
You know, one thing I'll say about Squarespace, I think it's really hard to create an ugly website on Squarespace, but that's different than being able to create a really beautiful website.
00:18:02
Speaker
I think the most beautiful websites we see on Squarespace are websites that have a lot of code. Yeah, a lot of code, which is ironic, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's like defeats the point of using Squarespace. They set up Squarespace so that anybody could just hop on and create like a decent site and not break it easily. Yeah. But that means that you can't
00:18:19
Speaker
Put things where you want them to go. You're really limited to columns and grids. They don't even have a lot of fonts. I think it's hard to add other colors. I've used it a lot. I don't like it, so it's not a platform that we work on any longer.
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah. And Wix, another, I think, popular option, I would say Wix if I had to rate, right? Or show it in WordPress being the ones we really like. Right. And then I think Wix is under that. And then I think Squarespace under that. There's also Shopify. And Webflow as well. I'm going to say Shopify also requires a lot of code to get things to look the way you want, unless you're really just doing a basic template on there.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah. And so I don't have anything bad to say about Shopify necessarily outside of maybe that. It's just maybe really hard to customize it, the design itself. You need to know PHP to be able to customize that. Whereas, but if you want a really easy e-commerce system, like I love Shopify's kind of backend. Yeah. If you don't need it to look a certain way and you're okay with just like the base design, then Shopify is great for that.
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But anyways, I mean, Shopify is a platform on the rise. So, you know, familiar is becoming a great Shopify designer. There's definitely a market there, you know, and a market for that. So something to keep in mind. Wix, I would say the same thing. Wix, I think, has overcome a largely bad reputation, especially in the SEO world. And, you know, I saw it might have been from somebody at Google or who previously worked at Google who was given some praise to Wix, basically saying, Hey, you know, this isn't bad for SEO anymore.
00:19:52
Speaker
So Wix is another, I think, growing platform. So another platform to explore potentially if you're getting started as a website designer. But of course, you know. I have to add about Wix. If you're going to put clients on there, I think they should know that they won't be able to move their content easily to another platform. Yeah, that is annoying. That is one thing that we don't love about Wix. You put your blog posts on Wix and they're not coming off unless you pay. There are some services that you can pay a lot of money to move your blog posts, but that's another reason I don't love it.
00:20:21
Speaker
If you have a WordPress blog, you can export those blog posts and take them to any other platform.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Show it, obviously, probably our favorite platform. WordPress Elementor, close second. But there are other platforms out there to explore. I would say one of the more interesting ones, me, is Shopify. If I knew nothing, but I knew this was something I wanted to learn, I might spend some time learning Shopify just because I think it is a popular e-commerce platform for businesses. I think there would definitely be a market there, I guess is what I'm saying.
00:20:51
Speaker
All right, so we've talked about a number of different things. I guess one point that you included in here is building your own website on the platform that you're using. Yeah, you're going to be using. It's a good, you know, especially if you're getting started, I'm guessing good portfolio piece.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yes, new portfolio. I mean, if you're gonna be learning all these things, you're probably gonna be itching to actually put them to use. And it's probably better to experiment on your own website than a client's website. So you kind of like learn how to do website building as you build your own website. And so I think it's a good idea to build your own website before you start soliciting other clients.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. I want to go through
Tools for Starting a Design Business
00:21:30
Speaker
two things here. I want to go through this, the tools that you'll probably need to look into if you want to get started as a website designer. Okay. All right. I know we're not spending a lot of time on design principles, right? So we mentioned them. If we have time here, we'll get to them. If you have questions though, if you ask questions, we'll likely record a podcast about it. All right. So if you have questions about the design principles that we talked about typography, imagery, texture, color, layout, and composition,
00:21:56
Speaker
And I have some books that I will link to in the show notes for this. Yes. And hopefully, you're a course. Just saying, people. I've been trying to get her to create a course around this for a long time. I think I'm making some progress. But more on that if you stick around. All right, so software subscriptions. What tools do you think people need in order to get started?
00:22:18
Speaker
Honestly, I think one of the greatest things about being a website designer is you don't need all that many tools as opposed to like a photographer where you need multiple cameras and flashes and lenses and batteries and memory cards and these sub-surgeons. I mean, you really just need a laptop, you need the computer, probably a Mac because they just tend to run better with all of these platforms. The Adobe Creative Suite, I use Sketch for designing my websites.
00:22:45
Speaker
And then you're probably gonna need something like dubsado for contracts and invoices. Yeah. And as far as sketch goes, sketch, I can't say is relatively new anymore. I mean, you've been using it for years, but maybe not quite as popular as the Adobe Creative Suite. Like maybe not as much name recognition there.
00:23:05
Speaker
No, it's really made for website designers. It has columns and grids built in. It really makes it easy to add different screen sizes. It makes it easy to select different elements and export them as an SVG or a PNG at different sizes. You could do all this in Illustrator, but then you have to separate things onto different canvases and then export them that way and it's a lot more work.
00:23:30
Speaker
Sketch, another thing that I love that they do is that you can turn something into a symbol, which means that if you edit it in one spot, it updates on all of the other pages, which is great for something like a website header or a website footer so that if you're working on a site for a client and they change their page structure, you don't have to go back and copy and paste that text on every single page. You can do it on one spot and all the other pages update. So just a lot of things like that that make it really easy for website designers.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, so basically the Adobe Creative Suite and Sketch, what do you use within the Adobe Creative Suite? I really just use Photoshop and Illustrator. Sometimes if I want to get fancy with motion graphics, I'll use After Effects, but that's really rare. Okay, awesome. All right, so any other subscriptions we want to talk about?
00:24:18
Speaker
I mean, I think that once you choose your website platform, there are probably going to be more that you need down the line. Like if you're going to do show it, you need to show it subscription. If you're going to do WordPress and Elementor, you need a blog, you need a host and you need an Elementor subscription and maybe some other plugins. But just to get started, I think that's all you need.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And if you're wondering, again, going back to the design principles, there are some tools that we've already talked about in past episodes. I think one of our more popular episodes was great imagery, tools for great imagery for a site or something like that. We'll link to it in the show notes here. But you go through a number of places where you get fonts and stock images and things like that. So be sure to check that out as well.
00:25:01
Speaker
All right, so we talked
Building a Portfolio and Finding a Niche
00:25:03
Speaker
about that. Let's jump into some of these questions and we'll just go through them. Okay. One by one. I have them all here, I think. Okay. Do you want to talk about portfolio building before we do questions or no?
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about portfolio building real quick. Okay, because I think that once you have your own website built, before you can really start getting clients, you're probably going to need some examples of your work on other people's sites. And so this is where you ask friends or family or whoever you can find, if you can help them create a website in exchange for maybe a small fee, maybe design, definitely design credit and definitely a testimonial.
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. As your portfolio building, you always want to, you don't want to do things for complete free, right? And it might be monetarily free, but you want to get the testimonial, you want to get kind words, you want to make sure that the site credit's going to be there, right? You probably even want a contract to that effect. So something that really lays out expectations for both sides, right? But you don't want to spend a ton of time on a website for somebody to launch it and then take your name out of the footer. Yeah. So any other tips when it comes to portfolio building?
00:26:12
Speaker
I would say don't settle on a niche until you've done several sites and worked with a variety of people. I think it took us a while to really figure out the creative niche was like our niche. Sure. Sure. And I guess at least be open. You know, you might set your mind to like, Hey, I really want to design websites for restaurants, you know, but maybe be open early on to taking on a client. That's interesting. That might not be a restaurant and going from there.
00:26:38
Speaker
And also know that even if you have a specialty, you're going to get clients from other areas. Like right now we're working with a hotel and restaurant and a builder and a few other like just random clients that are kind of outside of our niche. It is, but I would say even of those clients, one of the reasons they were attracted to us was because they're, they like the creative industry aesthetic, right? Like they like the kind of wedding industry aesthetic, if that makes sense. Yes.
00:27:06
Speaker
So it's not like they're looking for some real corporate-y, you know, it's not like they came to the hotel, for instance. It's not like they're looking for a website like Hilton. No. You know? Right? That wouldn't be a good fit. Anyways. All right. Ready to jump into these questions? We have a good amount of them. Yes. All right. So I'm just going to go through these. And if it's a duplicate, then we'll, you know, just mention that. But, uh, can cold emailing or direct messaging dream clients work?
00:27:31
Speaker
Personally, I don't think that I would recommend this. I mean, I think that if you have dream clients, you could work on building relationships with them. So commenting on their social media, maybe doing some sort of collaboration with them. But I think that just like a cold email pitch like, Hey, can I redesign your website? I don't know if that's, many people would take you up on that unless they really know you and you're really already talented.
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's an interesting question because, you know, I think, yes, it can work, right? Is that the most effective way to get new clients? Probably not. You just want to be careful around your messaging, too, because I think, you know, if somebody really wanted to work with, well, they want to email a website designer, but let's say somebody emailed Till, you know, for instance, like, can we redesign your website, you know? It's like, sort of could come off as an offensive question. Like, what do you mean? Do you think our website needs to be? Well, we get spammers that email us every day asking to redesign our website. Yeah, but that's different, you know?
00:28:24
Speaker
So you just wanna be careful about your messaging there. I think to your point, yes, DM people, start building relationships with people, but maybe look for openings. So if somebody mentions that they're gonna be redesigning their website soon, DMing them or sending them an email and offering your services, I think that makes a lot of sense. Whereas maybe somebody who, maybe they just relaunched their website and you don't know and they did it themselves and you're like, hey, I really think your website could use a redesign, can I do it? That could defend somebody.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah. So how to get hired by a successful designer as a junior designer? Well, kind of like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, first, you need a portfolio. You probably also want to make sure that you are fluent and well versed in that designer's platforms as well as their aesthetic. So if we were bringing on another designer, I probably wouldn't bring somebody on if they didn't understand show it and or Elementor. And if the work that I saw on their site looked nothing like we were creating for our clients, like if it was all very corporate,
00:29:21
Speaker
it's gonna be hard for me to envision what their work would look like when we have our more feminine wedding industry aesthetic with our clients.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah. I also think, you know, we've interviewed people before who've definitely given off the vibe that like, they're just here to get something from us and then move on. And don't get us wrong. Like we want everybody who works for us to leave any better spot than they came, right? And we want them to be, you know, to have grown in all sorts of areas, but certainly skill and expertise, right? But that's different than somebody coming to us and, you know, basically giving off the vibe of like, Hey,
00:29:56
Speaker
I just want to learn everything I can from you and then go run my own business. Yeah, exactly. So you want to, of course, be upfront with people about your goals and aspirations, but you also don't want it to come off as a very one-sided relationship where you're like, I'm just here to get stuff from you. Right.
00:30:12
Speaker
So something to keep in mind there, but yeah, doing some research about a business too. You know, we've had a number of interviews where people, they really had never heard of us and that's okay. Lots of people haven't heard of us. So that's not what I'm trying to say, but it's more like they show up and they're like, yeah, I don't, I don't really know what you're about or what you guys seem kind of cool. And it's like, okay, well that's, you know, well thank you, but
00:30:36
Speaker
I keep telling you that we need to do a whole episode on hiring or even applying for jobs because we've just learned so much in hiring our team and doing interviews. Exactly. Can it be done without social media?
00:30:51
Speaker
Yes, I would say it's harder though to really promote your business without social media. I mean, that just kind of reminds people where you are, that you're there, that you work with different people. I think a lot of cases it's easier to update your social media than it is your website. People probably aren't going to your website all the time or is there on social media all the time? Yeah. So I think all of our businesses have social media because we think it's important.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, I would 100% agree. I always talk about the most important thing is to bridge the trust gap. So you can do that. You could build a successful company without a website, right? But I would highly recommend having a website. Same with social media. You can do it without social media for sure. But the nice thing about having social media is that when somebody goes and just checks if you're legit,
00:31:37
Speaker
right without hiring somebody specially spending thousands of dollars they don't need to have thousands of followers but i want to go and just kind of like maybe see some of their other work and make sure that they look professional or yeah i mean these days you kind of question whether somebody is like a still in business if they don't have social media especially on the website.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And it differs how important that is from business to business, you know, our builder, our client that you're you're working with, right? Like our builder did not have anything. Yeah. And we don't expect our building social media at till I would say that to a certain extent, our social media accounts are a little less important just because we are working with a lot of bigger businesses. But that doesn't mean it's not important. And that's why we have a social media account.
00:32:20
Speaker
Right now and with till same thing like we got away with not having a website for a good amount of time. But after a while that just doesn't cut it. Well, you had a one page website that pretty much said like coming soon. Exactly. Exactly. Should a designer do it all design SEO copy?
00:32:34
Speaker
I think if you have the ability, I think that would be helpful for clients. I do think there's something to be said for specializing. So at Davey and Krista, we specialize in design. We refer people to a few very talented copywriters, but we don't typically write copy ourselves. I write it for templates, but I don't write it for clients. And that just allows me and our other designers to focus on the design and the aesthetics and then advise on copy.
00:32:59
Speaker
We can also do SEO, but we don't specialize in it. So like Till has team members who specialize in SEO. So I think there's something to be said for being a specialist. Yeah, absolutely. And just think about how long you want projects to last. I think when you do it all, you have projects that last for just months to years, you know? And it's, you know, just think about how you want that. It is nice, I think, from the design side, like when you're done the design, the project is over.
00:33:28
Speaker
And we have a lot of clients who keep us on retainer for ongoing work. We have a lot of clients who come back to us for additional work, but it is nice to have very clearly defined scopes. SEO is one of those things where I think every website designer should have some SEO know-how. They should have some familiarization with SEO. I guess because when you're marketing yourself, one pet peeve of mine is when designers will be like, and we do your SEO for you. And what that means to the designer is
00:33:54
Speaker
oh, well I'm just gonna update your page titles and meta descriptions. But that's like one tiny little sliver of SEO, right? And so if you're going to, you just need to be able to be clear with people about what it is that you're doing when it comes to SEO. And so we tell people, we focus on SEO, that has to do with site structure and everything that's kind of within that design realm. But if you want ongoing SEO, then you go over to Till, which is my other business, Till Agency.
00:34:22
Speaker
And we also have an SEO course, too, to teach people how to do it themselves. Yeah, how to do it on their own, you know? So, I don't know. I mean, there's obviously successful agencies out there that do it all. I think you just need a pretty big team to do that all well. Yeah, yeah. Or you're going to be really busy. Yep, very busy. Probably busier than you want to be. Yeah. All right, so this next one. What do you prioritize when you start the educational journey, design, branding, strategy, the web platform? So many things. And I think we touched on this a little bit. Yeah.
00:34:51
Speaker
I mean, again, this could be my design school bias, but I think design is the most important. I think everything else can kind of be taught or picked up along the way, but I think if you don't have the basic principles of design just to memorize to a point where you just kind of feel a design, I think you're going to struggle. I think a good comparison might be like the difference between somebody who can make a box
00:35:14
Speaker
cake mix and a professionally trained pastry chef who understands that like you need three duck eggs to make it rise a certain amount and like this much flour is going to result in this consistency. And so it's really understanding how all of those principles go together to make up the end result.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good one. I have a Harry Potter analogy. What's your Harry Potter analogy? You know, I forget what movie it is, right? But he's with the New Potions teacher, right? And he has what ends up being Snape's textbook. Yes, the Half of Prince. Yeah, and it has all the extra notes and you don't actually crush it or you don't actually cut it, you crush whatever it is that, right? I think it's similar to your point about the baker versus somebody who just, they kind of know the nuances.
00:36:01
Speaker
But I would agree, I think design principles and you'll start picking up strategy there and you'll start picking up strategy the more you just start building websites. So design principles, but then really knowing your website platform, the ins and outs of that. And branding, I think is kind of a secondary thing. You can design websites without doing branding.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, and we've talked about this on the podcast as well, and we're getting up there in time, so I don't want to spend a lot of time here, but brand design and website design are two different disciplines. They're two different things. If you're a good brand designer, doesn't mean you're going to be a good website designer. If you're a good website designer, doesn't mean you're going to be a good brand designer. They are two different things.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah, our website designers don't design brands. Not that they couldn't, but Sarah designs most of our brands, and that's her specialty. Exactly. Yeah. So just something to throw out there. All right. Next, several options to getting started. Custom designs, template customizations, or a template shop. Any recommendations on the best route? I think it's really personal preference. I started out doing custom design,
00:37:01
Speaker
But there weren't really, like templates, I mean they existed, but they didn't really exist in the way they did now. Show it was not a thing then. Or show it was a very different thing then. It was a flash thing then. It was a flash thing. Some people probably don't even know it flashes. So I started out custom design and then I moved to a template shop and then once we had our template shop we started customizing our templates. We've never customized other people's templates.
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think there's an exact right way. I think template customizations are a great way to get started because you're working with base designs from, I guess in theory, designers who had, yeah, from reputable designers. And so that's a really great way to get started, I think, if you're just learning and then moving in to maybe doing some of your own custom designs for clients. And then I think lastly, template shop.
00:37:47
Speaker
You know, once you learn new things, you're going to want to go back and update all of your templates, right? And so I think it's going to be a really tedious, I think it'd be really tedious for you to, as you're learning new things, going back and kind of fixing, so to speak, mistakes in your, in your templates to make sure that they're updated. I also think too, just again, really making sure that you have some of those design principles down and you know things really well before you're starting to create templates for the mass market.
00:38:14
Speaker
you'll start building an audience that way too, that you can actually sell your templates to. Right, and if you wanted to sell something in like the show at Template Shop, you kind of need to have some of those things in place in order to even get your stuff in the shop. Yeah. So. So also the different platforms, we talked about this a little bit.
00:38:31
Speaker
I would say that Show It and WordPress Elementor make it the easiest to give other people a design. Squarespace is limited in terms of transferring a design to someone else. Last time I worked with Squarespace, the way that you transfer a design is to either build it in their site or you have to teach somebody how to recreate it in their account. It's not like you share a little share key like with Show It and it just goes off to their account.
00:38:58
Speaker
I think in general too, Squarespace is like, it was really something when it came out, you know? But I think that there's other platforms out there that have just made, like, greater leaps, you know? Show it, of course, being one of them. But, you know, if for whatever reason you decided not show it, I mean, there's other options too that seem to be getting increasing in popularity, like Webflow. I know a lot of businesses that are using Webflow now.
00:39:22
Speaker
Shopify I think is continuing to sort of dominate the e-commerce realm if you're looking for a e-commerce specific builder. When it comes to e-commerce we'd still typically recommend commerce with WordPress. And then Wix as well I think is a better option than Squarespace. So just kind of my surface level thoughts of each. All right, so how do you find inspiration for creating new sites without imitating other sites out there?
00:39:51
Speaker
look at a lot of other sites out there and Davey's gonna laugh because this is true. I really have no idea what's happening in a lot of scenarios but I know for me personally when I'm designing I focus on my client and their audience and not what other people are doing so
00:40:07
Speaker
If my client tells me that their ideal client shops at J.Crew and wears Lily Pulitzer and is super preppy, then I'm going to go look at J.Crew and Lily Pulitzer and I'm going to pull colors and aesthetic and design from those big brands and not from other websites.
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think we've written a blog post about this. We also have a podcast episode about this. It's pretty old at this point, but it's, I think all the content is still true for us, which is we look for inspiration in industries outside of our own. So we really don't spend a lot of time looking at other designers inside of our niche or even like.
00:40:44
Speaker
one step outside, right? You know, I think you would say things like even reading fiction books, right, keeps you creative and, but again, looking for inspiration outside of your niche, I think is gonna really help in preventing you from imitating other sites. The other thing too, again, I think this is why template customizations are such an effective way to start is because in that situation, you're still giving credit to the person who created the template, right? That's important.
00:41:10
Speaker
But you're also trying to stay true to that aesthetic so at the same time like you have very clear guidelines on aesthetic because the template already has. Sort of a structure right of its own and you're learning the skills at the same time and so I think through doing that over and over and over again like you'll start figuring out okay what's my style you know right so.
00:41:32
Speaker
I'm gonna also say that there's a difference between inspiration and imitation. And so you might see something and be inspired by a certain piece of the layout or be inspired by the color palette. And you can pull ideas from there that don't look anything like, like your final product looks nothing like what you were inspired by just because you're pulling a piece of inspiration from that area and not just copying it, if that makes sense.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah. And this is our last question. So we're getting up there in time. I know. How long did it take for you to feel like you established a great client experience for custom sites? I'd be overwhelmed to get started. Do I need images and copy before I can even start designing? I want to lead clients on a great design journey.
00:42:15
Speaker
This is a lot of questions. How long did it take you to feel like you had an established a great client experience? Several years? Ongoing. Yeah, ongoing. Like obviously, you know, obviously we have a system and it works fairly well. I think we're always refining our client experience. Yes, we figure out where there are gaps, how we can make it easier for people and so forth.
00:42:36
Speaker
And that's not just like, you shouldn't let that prevent you from starting because there's just, you're not going to have the perfect client experience without having never designed before. Or worked with clients. Yeah. So you just got to do it and you know, be responsive to client feedback as you're going and make adjustments for future clients.
00:42:53
Speaker
For custom websites, we do a basic site outline before they even sign a contract, and that site outline includes all of the pages and the functionality on each pages. And then from there, I will put together a basic outline for them based on what I think I need for the homepage. And so they give me copy, they give me a ton of images, maybe images for specific spots like the headshot.
00:43:16
Speaker
And once I have all of that, and I have like a color palette, a mood palette board, I have branding elements, I can kind of start to pull together a homepage design. And I don't do the whole site at once. I do the homepage first, get signed off on it, and then keep going page by page. And I ask them for copy at each step of the way.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, so you don't need the copy at the outset necessarily, but you need it before you start designing that page. Correct. Yeah. Lots of thoughts there, but we're already coming out in 50 minutes. So a few things, if you have more questions about this, send them in because we'll record more episodes on this topic for sure, but you need to send us your questions first. Second of all, if you're interested in
00:43:55
Speaker
I don't know, taken a course by Krista on website design. Send us the email. We may be putting together a beta group sooner than later for that. So definitely let us know. And as always, if you just have content questions in general, send them in because they always make for good episodes like this one. Check out the show notes for links to books, other resources, a blog post version of this post. Exactly. And thank you for joining us.
00:44:28
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.