No.
I've been designing websites for almost 15 years and the field as a career choice has gone downhill for me ever since the beginning. The only reason I haven't completely scrapped my knowledge on the topic is passion, I love designing websites more than almost anything.
However, I've watched it go down the toilet for a long, long time. The reason that I chose not to study design in college was pretty simple. First of all, I was seeing MySpace come into popularity and all those teenager's websites that gave away free profile designs. Those MySpace profiles were actual HTML/CSS.. It was legit design that these kids were doing and as soon as they figured that out, it's over for design.
It's only gotten closer and closer to that. Over the past 10 years, the price of website design has gone down considerably! Especially for me; I live in the Mid-West and nobody here recognizes the value of a well designed website.. Here are some actual quotes I've gotten from potential clients:
- "This isn't California, you're not going to get those prices out here. I'll pay you $9/hour to start and after 30 days, we'll see about $10."
- "My nephew said he would do it for $150. Can you match this?"
Needless to say, I walked out of both of those conversations at those points. The days of snatching up $3-5,000 for a website are just about dead, unless it's a large business that understands the importance of a dynamic online presence, but you'll usually be apart of a team on those or they're handled in house.
Even offering websites for sub-$500 is tough, like I said, most clients don't actually understand the importance of a good site. So your $500 offer is overlooked for this $350 one, but even that guy is going to have to do some fast talking to beat out the $250 offer. It's nothing less than ridiculous and everything on TV and in people's minds about the field are playing against you.. I've seen it already in this thread.. "Designers are a dime a dozen."
This is completely false and misleading, just like those commercials on TV of "come here and build your own site for free! Why pay somebody?" First of all, like I said, I've spent nearly 15 years PERFECTING my craft. I can expertly manage multiple platforms and I can build CUSTOM templates for them as well. All the way from a blank PhotoShop file to a working theme.
THIS IS NOT A DIME A DOZEN!! Most "designers" understand this:
WP-Admin -> Themes -> Add New -> Upload.
That is ALL! However, good luck getting people to understand this.
Of course, it's all about how you manage your business (so business would by my suggested field), if you have some unique approaches to the operations of YOUR design business, then you have a chance. I've seen a couple of good ones.
1.) Design crappy static sites using free templates. The time takes less than 30 minutes.. Go to an outdated local business' website, place their content in a nice free template and tell them you'll sell them this website for $XXX.
2.) Mix SEO into it. If you can get your head around the fact that SEO is basically just a set of instructions of how Google wants you to design your website (which, no offense, most of these new turds can't, so we *good* designers have a very, very strong advantage!).. Then you can offer BETTER services than your competition.
At this point in the world, it's all about non-specialization. If you can take care of all of their online needs in one place, you have a good chance. However, just know that the competition is FIERCE in the design field. Design has gotten retardedly easy over the past few years and it only points to getting easier.
We're very near the point where people CAN do like on the commercials.. "Business name, logo... a little about us.. Done!"
So if you're going to get into it.. Do it NOW. Establish your client base NOW. You quite honestly DO NOT have 3-4 years to sit around on this. In 4 years, I don't even want to know how simple it's going to be to take a site from concept to launch. At this point in time, it takes a good designer about 1 day in WordPress, maybe 3-4 in Joomla. A couple hours for static HTML.
GL out there and stick to the cities. These rural fuckers think the only things worth money are John Deere tractors and 82 Camaros with no engine/trans.
so I am a sophomore (2nd year) at my college and I was wondering if web design is a good career choice to get into. I am asking this because i have to choose my major at my college next month and I am deciding whether i should get a degree in design or business..
