Can someone tell me about Web Design for a career?

It was easier before...when not that many people were doing it. Nowadays, a highschool kid with some HTML knowledge can call himself a freelance web designer, charge a few bucks less and there goes your customers.

If you want to be a web designer, there are a couple options, either be really really good so that you can ask for a few bucks more than the freelance guy, or be like the freelance guy and just go for quantity rather than quality. There'll always be people going for affordability rather than the overall "wow"ness.

Another way is to increase add-on value to your work. Instead of just design, offer development (ie. programming/applications) and site content (ie. content creation, SEO, etc.). All these will broaden your choices in the long run.

Well, it's no longer a hobbyists trade. It is a profession, and even though some wish to think of it as an easy trade that you can pick up in a couple of weekends, you can quickly find out that if you want to make a dime in the design arena, you need to be well versed in a lot of different brands of technology.

Design is just so competitive. You can't fake good design, so to get in anywhere, you need a solid portfolio along with the ability to interview well. You need to know about many different kinds of software. A good designer is a professional user of Adobe Creative Suite, especially in Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator.

You also need a knack for making things pretty. This comes from both studying and natural talent. I've always struggled a bit with coming up with a good design on my own, so I ended up on the development side of things (also very competitive..).

If you like to design, and you like the basics of programming, it's a great career. You should absolutely speak to someone at a university about programs they have in the field (I earned a degree specifically in web design). You should also research Web development as well, if you're interested in learning advanced programming techniques and what not.

The web design is an official program

Years ago when the web was young, and only a few people knew how to write html, there was a market for it. Nowadays, people who want a website will venture to a trusted, and good source, or just download dreamweaver, or flash and create their own, thus eliminating the need for a webdesigner. I used to design websites a while back, but the need for me to design has been cut quite a bit. On the otherhand, applying your skills to a company's networking department might be a better way to go. I would submit my work to many companies that are in need of webdesigners, and go from there. Hope this helps and Good Luck.

http://webdesign.about.com/od/jobs/Jobs_in_Web_Design_HTML_Web_Development_Professional_Web_Careers.htm

http://webdesign.about.com/od/jobs/a/aa090505.htm

I'm in education and I'll tell you that this is a career for those who LOVE it. anything in Information Technology (IT) is going to be pretty competitive and fairly expensive to get started. You should ask others that are not biased and see if they think you have talent in this field. If you really do, and you think you can come up with ORIGINAL ideas on a regular basis, then web design is for you. If not, I would choose something else.

From my experience, its not too bad, however being in the more technical side of web development(php,etc) is often a lot better. I prefer to have the success on my work dependent on something measurable (ie whether it does the correct task or not) rather than whether the person who the site is designed for likes the way it looks or not. Customers are idiots 99% of the time.