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If you have the passion to learn new stuffs, you can do it. Basically, you need to be as creative as possible in designing stuffs.
Start by learning Photoshop., CSS and HTML. There are TONS and Tons of tutorials available, but i'd prefer the "trial and error" way.
Designing is something I believe comes from your own creativity, you don't learn to be a successful designer, if you just wanna do it for $$ I wouldn't recommend you to get onto it. If you feel you're good at creativity, go ahead, learn photoshop, css, html5 as @ElitePIxels said.
However development is a bit versatile. You just need to learn to code and a passion to code.
Others will disagree, but you can't really "learn" to be a designer. Either you have the gift or you don't. You can spend years trying to get really good, only to be average on a gifted designers worse day.
Developing is simpler, kind of. If you have a good ability of understanding how things work. Coding and developing will be easier. You only need to learn the code and it's simply practicing from there on.
If you find yourself spending obscene amounts of time learning something and gaining little ground. Move on to something you're good at, unless you truly enjoy the path you're attempting to take.
If you don't beleive that you can't learn to be a designer . Look at me.... all my sites are templates because I suck at designing.
Well. I think I am trapped at imitation. Sometimes, you'll see a great design and I quickly incorporate the concept into my work with some modification.
Could you give some examples? I have similar problems. All starts from Bootstrap and modified from it.
@dnwk Imitating is fine when you're learning. Like most things, it takes 10000 hrs to actually be an expert at it. The patience to slog through all those hours of mind numbing tedium is what it takes.
I gave up, I just buy themes now and focus on back end
@jcaleb I am not good at backend and give up and focus on front end. The arts inside me is calling
@taronyu @jcaleb
Me too pretty much, I'm a much better developer than a designer. I try to modify them so they don't look like a template but yeah.
Took me a few years to figure out that there were some poeple who it just came naturally, me on the other hand had to really work at it and my designs came out mediocre at best, so when i need something, I just find something from someone much more creative than I and expand on it. Hopefully they end up looking like a little of both, not just their work.
And OP, I'd say all things mentioned by everyone above, plus learning some javascript/jquery, and if your eventually working for a company some php wouldn't hurt so you don't have to be completely dependent upon developers working on the backend. Some basic php and ajax would add to your skills if looking for a job and its what employers look for when hiring, but they also help even if your just selling templates etc.,
>
I am doing HTML, CSS , jQuery and PHP. I am thinking of my next step. Right now I do some front and some back. I am trying to switch my career more towards front.
Ok cool... you have all the basic skills then. But yeah, in this day and age when it comes to design you can never know too much html5 and ajax. I'd just keep on top of the latest trends and keep moving forward. Sounds like your close to being there anyway.
i have a an ongoing project. took me 100-200 hrs trying to get a nice UI. I gave up because after those effort, the UI still look ugly and unprofessional. I just bought from wrapbootstrap and was done with ui in a few hours. and made great progress after
html5+ javascript and photoshop.
@dnwk
Apart from HTML/CSS/ Javascript coding, you should understand colors, fonts and prototyping in Photoshop.
Colors: As UI/ Front end has to be pleasant, you should understand color schemes. How a particular color for a background is good and what color will contrast for the background color etc.
Some colors are not good for backgrounds and at the same time some colors are bad for fonts, most of the time the colors make a website ugly and not the coding.
Your best friends for understanding colors are photoshop and color scheme websites like the one in the link below:
http://www.colorcombos.com/
Fonts: Fonts make the Front end more readable as well good looking. Some fonts are meant for print media and not for websites. So reading material on fonts will help you become a better designer too.
http://www.google.co.in/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=understanding+fonts+and+typefaces&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=SPeJUq7uNYWIrQfk4oC4AQ
@praveenbhat Thanks. But I never did a prototyping in Photoshop and have no idea what it is. Could you point me to some directions?
Thanks
Is there any certification on UX design?
@dnwk
Prototyping is nothing but creating an illustration of the website you want to create. It needs at the least some basic photoshop skills.
Maybe the following link will help:
http://www.webcoursesbangkok.com/blog/how-to-prototype-a-webpage-design-in-an-easy-and-unexpensive-way/
Colors is very deep to analyze. In my previous employer, John Rocco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rocco) was our director. And many of our artist says John's knowledge of color is so deep
Agreed it is deep, but a front end designer is not complete till he understands how to use colors. So there has to be a beginning somewhere. It is also called design theory by some people.
john Rocco is impressive no doubt.
Some good design theory reads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/364079.Color_and_Meaning