Career & Finance: Employment

Why do you want to do this?

This has been on my to-do list for 7 years, easy. Not only will it help me in applying for full-time jobs (first, by enabling potential employers to more easily see my work, and second, by showing my web design ability), but it will also help me in seeking out freelance work. Plus, it will be good practice at web design — something I don't get to do much of. And, honestly, it will be fun. I always forget how much fun it is to immerse myself in a new, truly creative project until I'm actually into it!

What three things will you need to make this happen?

To assemble all my work samples and come up with a design scheme. This means pulling files from my old computer, updating old versions of Quark into InDesign and then into PDFs. It will inevitably mean updating projects, too, as I see things I can improve. Since many of these projects were done some time ago, I'd like to think I've become a stronger designer in the years since! Then I need to decide on an overall visual asthetic and determine how it will be structured, how the navigation will work, how the "brand" will carry through second- and third-level pages, etc...

To get more comfortable with Dreamweaver. Or to examine whether there's another program I should be using. Time permitting, I'd love to dive into Flash as well, but that may be being overly ambitious.

Take the site live. This is the scariest part for me. I don't know much about back-end web stuff. Should I use my allotted web space from my current email provider? Pay for it elsewhere? Buy a domain name? Aargh. Any advice is welcome!

What is the biggest barrier to your achieving this?

Time, of course. And getting over the initial feeling of "Oh my gosh, this is so big. How do I even start?"