Defining Success as a Designer
A few days ago Jonathan Wold, a new friend of mine, tagged me to write about my success as a designer. Well, I’ve dragged myself away from my client work to write about it, even though in my eyes I’m not greatly successful, yet.
O, and as an added bonus you get to see old pictures of me and download some games I made years ago! lol
1. How did you get started in the business?
Well, I dont remember the exact date, but in year 9 at school I believe (2000/2001) I started to have an interest in making computer games using a program called gamemaker, it was then when I wanted to have a website to showcase my amateur creations.
I discovered Frontpage Express, yes that evil program from Microsoft. My first ever site was called “MJ2K games” and had some horrible URL which was impossible to remember. The layout was of course table based, but served its purpose.
*Offtopic
I had a dig around and found some of my old games, hehe, you can download the best ones below, but if they blow up your computer I take no responsibility; use at own risk.
Download penguin panic // Screenshot
Download penguin panic lock up // Screenshot
*Back on topic
It was after that, I got hooked to websites. I made clan sites, fan sites etc, and gradually learned more about HTML.
In 2004 I started at college, doing a computer course. There was not much website work until the second year. I created a website for a school, it was still table based though. It was at this point I started using dreamweaver to make sites. During the lessons I was amazed by a site this guy made using CSS, this was when my passion for websites truly began.
From that point I self-studied in the majority of my free time, bagging small jobs for friends. I focused my learning on CSS and XHTML, which was a great decision as its got me where I am today. I also created “Blue Anvil”, not the wonderful site you see today, just a basic site. I dropped dreamweaver, and since then I’ve used text editors.
In 2005/2006 I took web design up “full-time”, even though still at college, I registered as self-employed and have been working happily as a freelancer since. Since then I’ve expanded my skill-set to include PHP and JS, which have also been a great help at college.
At the end of 2006 I started getting into wordpress, this has proved to be one of main things I work on.
2. What kept you going in those early years?
Shear determination to be the best, and the joy of creating things. Website creation is fun in my eyes, and I love getting ideas that are in my head on screen.
3a. Did you ever feel like you weren’t good enough or you would never make it in this industry?
Yes I did, mainly because I saw all the fantastic stuff other designers were doing. I did nearly give up after a bad client experience, but in the end that made me more determined, and now I believe my work is nearly top notch 
.
3b. How did you work through that?
Perseverance, learning from mistakes, and talking to other designers. I also asked peoples opinions more, because I always criticized my own work too much.
4. Do you look at others today and think “Wow, I wish I were that good”?
Sometimes, but at the end of the day I am what I am, and know even that if I see some fantastic work by someone else, Ill get to that level one day.
In fact, seeing excellent work motivates me to increase my own standards.
5. How do you measure success?
I measure my success on client satisfaction, wage, and popularity.
Popularity of my blog is important to me, I don’t want to blog to nothingness, and it shows people are genuinely interested in what I do if my blog is popular.
Wage is important because obviously I have living costs .
But client satisfaction – If I do a job and the client says “wow, thats great” then I consider that to be the greatest success of all.
6. By your standard, do you think you are successful?
To a certain degree perhaps, but I know there is always room for improvement, and ways to being even more successful. I think i’m definitely on my way to being successful, so I will continue doing what I do, and improve as I go.
Me now
Who’s next?
I’m tagging friends Anthony Brewitt, William Smith, Mike Cherim, and Kevin Barber. Look forward to your posts
Found this post useful? Why not buy me a coffee!
Anthony Brewitt says:
Remember chain emails from years ago and even chain letters from yesteryear, these kind of posts are great because you can follow a whole chain of contacts.
Comment made on June 22, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Will says:
Great insight there into how you got started and your motivation. Im new to this tagging thing, but its a great idea. I guess I just answer the same questions yeh?
Comment made on June 24, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Wendy says:
I have been following a similar path but I’m at the other end of the age scale. What text editors do you use?
Comment made on July 4, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Mike Jolley says:
I use htmlKit (http://www.htmlkit.com/). I’m actually using dreamweaver’s code view right now though, for the check in/out functionality.
Comment made on July 4, 2007 at 8:32 pm
WIll says:
I began in a similar way to you but with the step up from gamemaker.. the 3d gamemaker. then i created some sites in frontpage and more advanced games. The more advanced code led to Php and then a friend told me about these wonderful div things… now i am attempting to create a standards compliant CMS. here at http://www.alphaindigo.co.uk
Comment made on September 26, 2007 at 10:31 pm