Introduction Contents
Introduction
Let’s get to the nut of the book: web design is not
for cowards. It’s a hard field, always changing and
demanding more of you. There’s no resting on your
laurels, and there’s no cushy job that never changes
in web design. It’s all in.That said, it’s an exciting time to be a web designer. With increased
browser support and the proliferation of standards, the web has
never been more receptive to innovations in design. We’re seeing
trends today that ignore previous limitations. There’s a new focus
on aesthetics and user experience that was not as widespread in
the past. The advent of smartphones with powerful built-in brows-
ers has challenged designers to rethink the way they conceive a
design. It’s not just the fact that we have more and better tools and
toys to play with than ever before; as an industry, we’re growing up.
Web Design Confidential isn’t going to teach you to design. If you
come looking for lessons on design or hacks for browsers, you’re
going to be disappointed. There are no tutorials or code snippets
here. Web Design Confidential was written not so much to teach
you about web design, but to share insights and bring clarity to the
web design industry. There is already a plethora of books out there
that describe how to design a website; I wanted to talk about how
to design a career. You’ll find some special advice in here for new
designers just starting out, but you’ll also find advice for anyone, at
any point in their career, who wants to improve their skills.Web Design Confidential is also a survey. We’ll look at the results
of the 2011 Web Design survey, hosted by WebDesignTuts+, which
had more than 5,400 responses from professional web designers
worldwide. We’ll pick apart the data and see what it says about
where our industry is going and what that means for a modern web
designer. We’ll look at characteristics that happy and successful