For veteran web design professionals, there was no choice but to learn web design by themselves – for the simple reason that there were no academic qualifications.
Of course, one could take an IT course but there weren’t any courses that helped you with design.
All this has changed now since most of those designers who learnt web design the hard way have now developed courses that cater to both coding as well as web design.
But which is better – taking the self-study path or getting academic qualifications in order to become a web design professional?
Compared to a university, self-study can be considered as offered at little or no costs. In the United States, some of the colleges that offer web design courses which usually last 3 years, include Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Harvey Mudd College, Columbia University as well as Wesleyan University.
In Europe, however, a college education in web design is free of cost especially in countries such as Finland, Norway, Austria and Denmark.
As for self-study, one can join a tuts website for a subscription amount of $30 every month. Not only will you have access to web design blogs, books and ebooks but also to webinars held by industry experts. Some of these tutorial websites include Tuts+, TreeHouse, Lynda, Codeacademy, Codehouse and Udemy.
Some of the people associated with learning from tutorial websites is that you can not only learn at your own pace, you can learn from your own home as well as remain up to date with the latest trends.
Regardless of the path you choose, full-time in-house web designers $95000 per year and as freelancers make about $57000 a year.