It has never been easier in this modern technological era to become a graphic designer.
You do not need a degree in graphic design to work as a graphic designer. You can now learn and study graphic design through online graphic design courses like Blue Sky Graphics graphic design courses. Just as easy as it is to learn graphic design you can easily find jobs in this sector, especially nowadays with the COVID-19 crisis surge that has forced many people to work from home or find roles that allow them to do so.
With each new day, many new websites and blogs are being created using UX and UI design through WordPress. You should take advantage of the functionality available within WordPress in order to differentiate yourself from others. If you would like to become a web designer you should be aware of these critical components in UX and UI design:
The theme you choose within your WordPress website is a very important factor towards success when creating your site. Therefore, our advice to you is to select the right theme for your website. This is because your theme will have a big impact on your site’s SEO, aesthetic, functionality, speed as well as everything else.
Web Design Courses (including UX and UI design)
1) You need to have the necessary knowledge and skills of graphic design before learning web design, UX and UI design, which you can obtain through a graphic design course.
2) The most essential tools for learning web design, UX and UI design are both Elementor and WordPress.
3) In order to successfully secure a job after learning web design you will need to have a concrete portfolio as well as a certificate.
Here at Blue Sky Graphics we offer our students one-to-one lessons when learning online graphic design, UX and UI design as well as web design with us.
Once students have completed their course they will receive and have:
* An industry-standard portfolio to assist them in securing work easily.
Here we have some advice for WordPress web designers:
It is important to have an appropriate theme:
In regards to the themes of WordPress, you will have a large variety of choices available to you. Including free themes which you may want to benefit from. There are of course many premium themes available which can be a good expenditure. Obviously, the free themes are available without the need of having to pay anything, however, the premium themes and custom-made ones will not be free. You should consider these factors when selecting the appropriate theme for your website:
*Most importantly make sure that the theme you choose has SEO optimisation. This is a requirement for search engines utilisation.
* The theme should be of terrific quality. When we say terrific quality, we mean the UX and UI design should be pixel perfect as well as adaptable to a variety of devices, whether that be a mobile phone or laptop. Factors such as speed and other things are also critical to consider when selecting your theme.
*It makes sense to select a theme that will associate and blend in with the nature of your business for your website. You should understand the needs of your website. For example imagine you may need an e-commerce site (a website that allows for the selling of products and goods), in this case, you should ensure that your website is made correctly to support this.
Selecting your hosting provider:
A critical part of your website is choosing an efficient hosting provider. An efficient hosting provider will help to better your website. There are three very important components to consider when choosing a hosting provider, these are security, performance, and usability.
You will find tons of website hosting providers that are available on the market and that will provide lots of different packages. We advise you to do some research and find one who offers you the greatest pack for your needs at the best price. By this, we do not mean just going with the cheapest one but to carefully investigate what they are offering and how good their services are.
It is important to ensure that they will offer direct technical assistance. A website hosting plan cannot be referred to as user-friendly if it does not provide equally technical and non-technical help. Also, ensure that they keep up the level of support.
Download these plug-ins and tools:
There are loads and by loads, we mean thousands of WordPress plug-ins. Many of which are free, although others require payment. The purpose of plug-ins is to offer additional functions to your website. This is to make your role as a web designer easier. You may find that a lot of features within a normal WordPress website are not available, this is where plug-ins can be utilised to fix this. There are a variety of plugins available for several needs. While there are a lot of free plug-ins that can be installed with ease and almost immediately, you may have to use a particular costly plug-in.
We recommend making your website as light as you can. Try not to fill your website with too many plug-ins. Before downloading a plug-in it is a good idea to do some research and read the relevant reviews. It’s important to consider that plug-ins that have not been developed properly can cause issues to your website.
Keep your plug-ins and themes up-to-date:
One more piece of advice that we think is important is to keep your plug-ins and themes updated. Generally, you could work on your site for weeks or even months without realising the need of making changes. Not updating your plugins and themes would be a big mistake. The need for these updates of plug-ins is not only for the enhancement of usability but more importantly for the worries of security. So it may look like it’s a small change, but the update can be used to avoid a security breach on your website.
Always update in a test environment:
Another piece of advice is to always do test updates in a separate situation. This is due to the risk of something risking your live site to fail whenever you implement changes to it. You should especially avoid not being up-to-date if your website is connected to your business. This is because it can result in a big loss of sales. A secret within WordPress is to utilise a staging site for speedy resolutions. Very often a staging site can be referred to as a testing site which is a double of your production site. Ultimately, it is better for you to try it out in a test environment before applying it to your main website. To help you in this situation, you can use Local which is a free software.
Images and graphics are essential factors to your site. Whenever used appropriately, it can better the overall aesthetic and quality of your website. It is important to make sure that the images are optimised properly. This is because photos that are not optimised usually take a lot longer to load which then can decrease the speed of your website. For example a picture file of 10 MB could seem great on your device, however, it may not be suitable for your site. The loading speed of your website will have a major impact on your SEO.
To resolve this issue you simply need to minimise the size of the picture. To do this you will need to minimise the length and width of your photo in either Photoshop or another online software that lets you do this.
Ensure that your website is mobile friendly:
It is critical that your website is mobile friendly. It needs to be able to fit and modify appropriately on whichever device it is being used on. This also should not jeopardise the quality. As mobile phones are used on a daily basis by users for a variety of tasks, it is unacceptable to not make your website mobile-friendly.
What’s the best way to study more about WordPress?
WordPress was once known for being a tool for blogging, but this is no longer the case. It is now being used as a comprehensive fully-featured content management system, it is has come a long way from where it began.
In order to help you understand what a content management system is we are going to explain what a website and what a blog is.
A website is simply something that tells viewers who you are, why and how you began, how to contact you, as well as, content on what you provide. Websites are not much more than this. Whereas a blog is a group of articles and chronicles on a variety of subjects that are structured in a reverse chronological sequence. Many may call it a public diary.
On the other hand, a content management system lets designers create web pages as well as write articles and it also allows them to easily adjust and modify aspects within their website.
WordPress is a totally free platform to use:
WordPress is 100% free, with no hidden costs, obligations, or shame that you are using something you could be paying for, as in when you would not contribute to your local Radio station after listening to it every day for the preceding 20 years.
By going to WordPress.org, you can acquire the programme without the need of payment (notice the.org).
But one drawback is that WordPress must be hosted somewhere. There are two options:
1) Self-hosted, in which you pay for hosting and also maintenance and support.
2) Managed hosting, during which you hire somebody to manage hosting and the majority of the maintenance and upkeep for you.
What is the definition of self-hosting?
Self-hosting for WordPress involves paying for a website hosting package, installing the free WordPress files, and downloading them onto your account by yourself. This can require time and technical knowledge that you may not have.
Having a wide variety of themes available make website design easy: A website theme is essentially the facade, exterior, and element that will make it look aesthetically appealing. With WordPress themes, you have many design and layout options to choose from, without the stress of having to get coding involved.
Selecting a theme for your website or blog will unlikely be the most stressful aspect because of the hundreds of themes available.
You also have the option of having your navigation bar on either the right or the left side. You can also choose whether to have one column, two, or three columns. There are an excessive amount of UX and UI design and colour combinations available too as well as different styles such as newspaper, traditional or a magazine-style.
Within all these options you can also choose between paid and free themes. Whereas the premium themes are professionally constructed and developed to offer additional features like SEO assistance and compatibility with mobile phone devices and tablets. The free themes offer similar themes as the paid ones do, just be aware that the free themes can lack certain components or bonuses that the premium themes may offer.
It is easy to add website material with UX and UI design:
Every UX and UI design demand can be satisfied by a plug-in:
Did you know that by adding plug-ins to your website you can add functions and tools to your site? A great advantage of using WordPress as your content management system is that it is used and supported by a big community of efficient developers. So, website designers can now access a great selection of the best WordPress plugins.
WordPress plug-ins:
The official WordPress plug-in directory has about 54,000 plug-ins available. Because of this, there will always be a plug-in available to satisfy every need and desire. You can use WordPress plug-ins to evaluate your content for SEO, attach contact forms, add automatic emailing, create membership divisions, and live chat. These are just a few of the options of what you can do with WordPress plug-ins.
Nowadays, saving time at work is really quite important. People are always looking for ways to save time, even if it is only a few minutes. These plugins allow business owners to complete nearly all of their chores with just very few clicks of the mouse. You don’t need to spend days creating all of your online assets and paperwork from scratch. Plugin capabilities range from complex features like multi-language support to simple ones like generating a video gallery.
Flexibility to tailor UX and UI design:
Several of the add-ons provide you with the option to tailor your blog posts and favorite site features. Almost all plugins allow you to turn on and off numerous settings as well as change styles like colours and fonts at any moment. The WordPress themes are easy to modify, so you can get started right away. Your website might be built around your intended audience or test findings.
Low-cost:
Because site construction is a costly process, and not everyone can afford to pay significant amounts of money on a hosted service, WordPress is an excellent option for them. With the help of WordPress plugins, you can almost always discover a free version of a plugin.
Exceptionally trustworthy:
Even more company owners are worried about their business’s flawless level of reliability because any setback means they will lose out on a potential profit. By using WordPress plugins, you may accomplish the same for your website. Some of them are extremely productive. Numerous website owners keep themselves up to speed on a daily basis in order to address issues and improve security. Whether you choose to use the free option or the paid version with more features is completely up to you.
What is the best way for a beginner to learn web, UX and UI design?
While a newbie webmaster might have their site functioning with very little tech expertise, being a WordPress developer demands a far broader skill set. If you put in the effort, you can learn the basics of WordPress and also have your site functioning in no time.
Industry professionals may agree on the following basic timeframes:
10 hours or less for a beginner WordPress user: This demands the development of a basic website as well as its hosting on the internet. WordPress offers a user-friendly interface with plugins that extend WordPress’ capabilities. Basic users have the ability to upload blog entries, download plugins, and make minor changes to the website.
It has never been easier in this modern technological era to become a graphic designer.
You do not need a degree in graphic design to work as a graphic designer. You can now learn and study graphic design through online graphic design courses like Blue Sky Graphics graphic design courses. Just as easy as it is to learn graphic design you can easily find jobs in this sector, especially nowadays with the COVID-19 crisis surge that has forced many people to work from home or find roles that allow them to do so.
Graphic design has become a big industry in today’s society. There are many struggles to understand the difference between web design and graphic design.
Many also do not comprehend The differences between logo design, web design, Print design, and UI design. This can leave clients and customers confused about which kind of designer they need to employ. A graphic designer’s role is to fully understand the graphic design programmes and the abilities of these software and use them to create beautiful digital artwork. Some graphic designers may know other forms of design and others may specialise in one area.
With the recent pandemic and the world not knowing what’s going to happen from one day to the next which has created so much negativity. We thought we would spread some positivity and love by speaking to our graphic design teachers about why they love graphic design so much!
A professional web designer can work from their own home office if they are willing to invest in the necessary equipment and have a reliable internet connection. A handful of the necessary tools that can be found in a modern web design toolkit are a computer, an internet connection, graphic design software, and editing software.
