How to Get Started as a Web Designer in Malta – Part 4 (Web Design Resources)
Earlier on in our series about web design in Malta, we highlighted the importance of following web design trends and reading industry magazines and blogs. Today we round up some of the essential web design resources for you, leaving you with the task of reading up and improving your skills!
A good way of keeping tabs on all these resources is to use an RSS reader such as Netvibes. You can set such a service to display the latest posts from all these blogs on one page, thus you can have a daily snapshot on all that is happening in the field of web design worldwide.
We hope that our series about getting started as a web designer in Malta has been of help to you, if you would like us to share our thoughts on any other area of web design or development, let us know! We are very passionate about WordPress, web design and web development and love sharing what we learn along our journey.
Here at Isle Creative, we offer web design services of the highest calibre. Take a look at our portfolio, and if you would like to get a free proposal for your own website, contact us today.
How to Get Started as a Web Designer in Malta – Part 3 (Landing a Job)
All right Johnny, you’ve got the skills and you’re ready to land your first gig at a web design company in Malta. What’s your next step?
I recommend that you build your own site, which must clearly showcase your skills, and a portfolio of previous work you have done. Yes, you might be just starting out and not have any clients of your own, but that is no excuse for not having a portfolio. Have you built any sites during your studies? They go into your web design portfolio. Also try approaching a handful of non-profit organizations and offer to build them a website for free. You will be amazed at the value of this exercise. It will help you build confidence in dealing with clients directly, and can also result in the acquisition of valuable contacts that can give you paid work. A link back to your site is also good advertising for you.
Once you’ve got your portfolio in place, search for the biggest players in the web design market in Malta, and send them a personalized email in which you offer your services and give them a link to your portfolio. Of course, it is also a great idea to build profiles at recruitment sites, here are a few important ones that frequently look for web designers in Malta:
Done already? OK! Keep reading up on web design on a daily basis and hone your skills until you get a great offer from a web design company in Malta. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, why not try freelancing?
Here at Isle Creative, we offer web design services of the highest calibre. Take a look at our portfolio, and if you would like to get a free proposal for your own website, contact us today.
In Part 4 of this series, we take a look at some of the best online and offline resources for web designers.
How to Get Started as a Web Designer in Malta – Part 2 (Skills of a web designer)
The phrase ‘web designer’ can be a bit of a misnomer at times, because different people associate several skills with a web designer.
Most people simply think of a web designer as someone who is very internet-savvy and can build a website for them. Of course this might be the case, but more likely a web designer is someone who is specialized on the ‘looks’ side of a web project. In this sense, we are looking at a process involving at least 3 people:
- Web Designer who designs the look of the website and outputs a PSD (Photoshop file).
- Front End Developer who takes the PSD and codes it up into web pages through the use of HTML, CSS and JS code.
- Back End Developer who takes care of the Content Management System powering the website. His output is a finished website, with a login area where the client can enter and modify the content of the site. This person is usually a specialist in coding with the use of languages such as PHP and C#.
Of course it is not always the case that a web designer is focused on just the design. I would recommend that any web designer learns how to do the job of a Front End Developer at the very least. This will also help in giving an understand of the underlying code structure of a website, and how that will affect the design. Designers who have no idea of how HTML and CSS work typically output PSD files that cause headaches for front end and back end developers.
To recap, a web designer in Malta should be confident with the following:
- Adobe Photoshop (to design the graphical element of websites)
- HTML5 + CSS
- Possibly JQuery or other JavaScript framework
- Confident with other tools such as FTP, Prototyping Software
I would also recommend that a web designer should be very familiar with the concepts of usability, as this will help him design interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use for the end user.
Here at Isle Creative, we offer web design services of the highest calibre. Take a look at our portfolio, and if you would like to get a free proposal for your own website, contact us today.
In Part 3 of this series, we will talk about ways of landing a job as a web designer in Malta.
How to Get Started as a Web Designer in Malta – Part 1
Working as a web designer in Malta can be a very attractive proposition for young IT students who have a strong interest in the internet. There are enough jobs to go around, especially due to the constant influx of online gaming companies who tend to require web designers to complement their team.
As a web designer in Malta you can expect a good pay, an interesting job, and the opportunity to constantly learn new techniques. An exceptional web designer invariably has a fine taste in design and tries to find inspiration all around him. Of course, it is essential to remain updated with the latest design trends, and this can be done by reading industry magazines or checking website design blogs on a daily basis. I cannot stress enough on the importance on keeping updated with what’s happening abroad. It is easy to develop a particular style and get stuck with the same style churning out sites that soon start to look dated and definitely not cutting-edge.
Here at Isle Creative, we offer web design services of the highest calibre. Take a look at our portfolio, and if you would like to get a free proposal for your own website, contact us today.
In Part 2 of this series, we will check out some of the required skills that a web designer should possess.
WordPress Training Courses
We are now offering a one day training course for Euro 500 + VAT to the first ten customers to email us on info@islecreative.com, the course will include:
- How to buy hosting
- How to setup an email account
- How to ftp to your new hosting account
- How to setup a database
- How to install WordPress
- How to add pages to WordPress
- How to setup your blog
- How to optimise the site ready for Google
- How to install theme you are happy with
- How to setup Google Analytics
What’s more:
- We provide unlimited Tea and Coffee
- We get the pizza
All that for Euro 500 + VAT and you will leave with:
- A website
- An email address
- Free one year’s hosting
- Google Analytics (hit reporting)
- The ability to turn your 5 page website into a hundred page website if needed
So what are you waiting for, contact us today!
IT Meetups in Malta – 28th September
Following the previous post about meetups for web designers and developers in Malta, and some discussions on the Linkedin group for Malta IT Specialistss, we have decided on the following date or our first meetup:
Date: 28/09/2011
Time: 19:30
Location: Caprice Bar, Corinthia Palace, Attard
http://www.corinthia.com/en/Malta_PalaceHotelandSpa/dining-and-bars/bars/palace-caprice-lounge-bar/
My idea is that the meetings would not start off as being too technical, but would promote exchanges within different sectors of IT and also networking. It would be nice if non IT savvy people would also be able to view these events as an opportunity to come and mingle, and learn. I am thinking of a few possible profiles as example:
- students considering taking up IT studies, and wanting to know more about the opportunities once they graduate.
- small business owners looking for some services but not knowing where to begin from, or looking to get some knowledge before making any decisions.
- regular people who would come and ask questions about computers, like suggestions for good anti-virus, how to do specific things online, are online payments safe, etc.
Therefore we’re keeping it very open at this point, the aim is to get something going on a regular basis and take it from there.
If you are interested in joining, please send an email to jean@islecreative. Hope to see you there!
Meet-ups for Web Designers and Developers in Malta
These last few weeks we’ve been thinking about the fact that there seems to be a lack of meet-up opportunities for web designers and developers in Malta. In other countries it is common practice to have regular meetings in casual places such as bars, where web design and web development professionals meet up to share and discuss the latest technologies or even ask for help on some issue. We would like to play a part in fostering this mentality here in Malta too, so we are planning on starting some event of this sort.
We would like to know if there are other people who are interested in joining in the organisation and participation to such networking events. Please get in touch if you are interested in getting this going!
Why We Use WordPress
Isle Creative is proud to be the no.1 provider for WordPress services in Malta. We have been the pioneers in introducing the concept of open-source CMS systems in Malta. We feel this is a good time to share with you why we actually chose to use WordPress as our development platform in the first place, when other companies were basing their offerings on other proprietary technologies such as .Net.
WordPress now powers over 8.5% of the web, is used on over 26 million sites, and WordPress.com is seen by over 250 million people every month. That’s just to give you some stats and proof that we are not just talking about any system here.
WordPress Is Open Source (Free!)
Instead of having 6 developers supporting your website, you have got over 10,000 developers who are part of a community working to constantly improve the product. You are not going to be stuck with a CMS that only one company can use.
WordPress Is Flexible and Extendable
Flexibility allows us to build sites faster, meaning more of your budget is focused on design and user experience rather than programming and debugging. The community has made it extendable, meaning that almost everything you can think of has already been built, which speeds up development.
WordPress Is Easy To Use
As a CMS WordPress is super-simple, intuitive and elegant to use, but is also robust. We provide professional video tutorials which will allow you update the site yourself in hours.
WordPress Is Here To Stay
Microsoft recently decided to stop development on its own blogging platform and move its 30 million users over to using WordPress. There are over 25 million WordPress publishers out there, and it is used by The New York Times, Ford and even the UK Prime Minister. This is not a bleeding edge technology that will have disappeared in 6 months time. The large community means it is here to stay and will constantly be improved.
Would you like to have your site powered by the best Open Source CMS out there? Contact us today!
Isle Creative Recommended By WordPress Organisation
In recognition of Isle Creative’s excellent work based on the WordPress platform, the WordPress organisation itself, through its website CodePoet.com, is recommending our WordPress consultancy services in Europe.
We take this opportunity to thank WordPress for the magnificent CMS they have built. Many Maltese businesses are already using WordPress as their web platform, and judging by the number of requests we’ve had in recent months this number will be going higher and higher in the near future.
View Isle Creative listed on CodePoet.com
Isle Creative is Malta’s best WordPress consultancy, working with WordPress for over 5 years. We have built our business around WordPress and know the system inside out. It can cater for any type of website, contact us today if you are interested in switching over to WordPress or building a new blog/website.
Isle Creative Develops WordPress Blog
Isle Creative has just launched a WordPress blog, www.wpmayor.com, where one can find several hacks, tutorials, news and resources about the WordPress CMS. The site is one of our contributions to the WordPress community, which has already shown alot of interest in the site, with a very good number of visits being registered in the first weeks. We are committed to publishing many articles covering a range of WordPress topics, and hope you enjoy reading them.
Check out our new WordPress resource site, WP Mayor. Interested in WordPress services, see what we can offer.
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