How the hell did I get here, and where am I going?

Sometimes I sit back and wonder about the journey I took to become a web designer. I started out as that kid you pay $20 to for something quick because they know a little bit about computers. I loved graphics, and making images. I would take poetry and images, and combine them through blends, with textures and other things I experimented with. A friend of mine from childhood knew a little bit about how to get started with a website; she had me going with Geocities in very little time. I was able to post my writing, my graphics, and explore a world I was only just beginning to learn about.

As far as graphics went, I was completely proficient with Photoshop. I knew how to do any effect if you just asked me, and even do some digital painting; while it was nowhere near what my abilities blossomed into whenever I purchased my first tablet, but coding was a bit different. I can’t even remember where I first began coding. I think it was the layout of my first Geocities site, a very creative design which I still feel is beyond what I should have been able to concoct. Of course, my friend helped me, and mentored me along every step of the way (her mother was a designer, and had taught her many things). The code to the site wasn’t that great, but the design itself was far more advanced than what one would expect out of two kids.

Fast forward a few years. I’m still playing around with that site, and eventually a friend of mine gives me a little bit of server space – fifty gigs, enough to host a gallery of my artwork. I spring on the chance, and begin designing for it. This same friend actually (by accident) points me in the right direction.. and soon I’ve figured it out. I begin to dabble in PHP; soon the layout contains more advanced, programmed elements, and within a short amount of time, I have a design whose coding is standards-compliant, valid CSS2.0 and XHTML. I work on this site for a few more years, dabbling here and there on some design projects to boost my portfolio – some for friends, some for a little more profit.

I eventually graduate high school, and land my first job that summer as a web designer for an agency.

And with my earnings, purchase my tablet – the Intuos3 was new at the time, and the best in its class (I still have that same tablet, albeit it has been chewed on here and there by cats).

I work at this job for a time, and one of the designers there – a very talented individual – and I become very good friends. He points me in an even better direction, telling me more of what to read, and what to do. I voraciously devour books concerning standards and usability, and read the archives for A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, to name a few. He teaches me years and years of knowledge over the next year (we are still in touch by the way; I still have him critique my designs here and there to see where I can improve, for I am still learning). I learn all sorts of thing; my foundations of JavaScript and PHP are increased, I even begin to write my own regular expressions.

That spring, I attend professional design courses, and I even learn Flash. Illustrator? Yah, by the time winter’s over, I have mastery over that, too – prior to this I’d dabbled at Illustrator and Fireworks, but never got as much work out of it as I did Photoshop. It is at this point that I learn WordPress, and began to delve even further into learning PHP. I move my site to WordPress, and am beginning to make intermediate and advanced themes. I then land a job with a nearby company making double what I had been making the year before, as a manager – and begin to do things I’d never thought possible, including working on themes for various blogging platforms.

By this point, I’d been doing freelance design on my own for five years, and have a handful of clients or projects I’d volunteered for. I even have some professional training under my belt, and am learning even more as I go along.

Want to know the funny part of this? The entire time that I was going through this development process, I had thought I was going to be a computer engineer. No joke; I’m still working on a double major with my main focus as a software engineer (hey, it’s good to be flexible, if anything).

So what am I trying to prove? As much as we hate on that kid that supposedly gets our clients because they’ll do it for cheap, one day they’ll probably be in our shoes. They’re the future of design, just as much as they might become future presidents or somesuch (whatever the cliche is for that). Granted, we’re probably the best bargain either way – but someday, that kid who hacks at making terrible websites may one day become a very respected designer or developer – and that’s something to watch out for. It depends upon one thing: self motivation to be the best web designer.

So what’s your story?