How I Pivoted from Graphic Design to Web Design
Evelyn, age seven
What will YOU BE when you grown up?
Remember when you were a kid and an adult asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I do. I was seven years old sitting in the middle seat of our station wagon doodling in a notebook when my Dad asked me. I drew A LOT as a kid which is what prompted the question. When I uttered my response I wasn’t sure where I’d heard the term or what it meant but it sounded like something I’d be good at.
“Commercial Artist,” I said. My Dad’s expression told me that he, an economics guy, didn’t really know what that was either. Commercial artist was a common catch-all term in the ’70s for animator, designer or anyone in the advertising/creative space.
Who knows, maybe I was subconsciously influenced by reruns of Bewitched. I remembered being intrigued by Darren’s workplace, an advertising company called McMann & Tate.
At age 15 I got my first logo job to create t-shirt art for a grassroots environmental club. I drew a pen & ink linear sun setting into the horizon line. I worked hard on the design and was proud of the result. The twenty bucks I earned made it all the sweeter. Get paid to draw? Yeah, I could do that.
Evelyn with a Mac Plus. I superimposed Bill Tata’s photo on the screen. He was the supervisor at the MICA Graphics Lab and the first to show me the wonders of the Mac and MacPaint! LOL!
I entered the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1986. Shortly after arriving, MICA got its first desktop computer, a Macintosh Plus ED. I was smitten. Between it and the Linotype CRTronic 360 typesetter, I created a fully typeset portfolio, totally unheard of back then.
The economy was retracting and the job market tightening. I was one of only a handful of visual communication majors who landed a full-time job in a graphic design firm upon graduation. I’m sure my professionally typeset portfolio played a big part. I felt super “techie.”
Graphic design, the perfect at-home business
I worked at three firms over an eight-year period as a production person, graphic designer, and a magazine art director. After I got married, I began to think about the juggle of working a full-time job and having a baby.
I observed my older sister commuting with her very young children through rush hour traffic to daycare, working all day, then back home in the evening rush hour. It looked exhausting. I knew if I wanted to be a mom and continue to work I’d have to do it from home.
Working from home wasn’t as common in the mid-’90s because the internet was dial-up but graphic design was well-suited to it. Most of the client contact could be transacted through phone calls, email and couriers and the work itself could be created at any time as long as the deadlines were met.
My husband and I bought a fixer-upper we could afford on one salary and two years before I had my first child, I launched Design Powers. I had one repeat client, a Power Mac 8100 and very little business experience.
Over a fifteen-year period I maintained a consistent flow of work through word of mouth and was fortunate to have a steady stream of appreciative clients and income, but I could see the field of graphic design changing…
Budgets for print were shrinking because companies were allocating their marketing dollars to the web. I’d get asked to design a website but had no idea where to start. I knew if I didn’t learn web design, I’d get left behind.
I wasn’t a techie after all
I took web design classes but they never gelled. The first attempt was in 2001 through the Corcoran School of Art Adult Study Program. It was on a Monday night from 6–10 pm for a semester.
My children were three and one years old so I was sleep-deprived. The class was taught by a disembodied female voice upfront using slides in the dark. The course material came from a computer manual she’d written. The voice knew her stuff but she was monotone and technical. I found the material difficult to comprehend. I slept walk through the whole course and thought I’d try again when my kids were older and I had the bandwidth to focus.
In 2013 I enrolled in Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) beginning web design course. It was a good review of HTML and CSS but nothing I could build a money-generating business from. I felt disheartened, maybe I’m NOT techie enough.
In hindsight, it’s not about being techie. It’s about practice, more practice, failures, successes, and repeat.
It’s not only what you know, but who
In 2014 I signed up for a 12 week, all-day Saturday front-end web development class at General Assembly. I adored the teachers and felt I was finally getting instruction I could eventually monetize.
We focused on HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript. I also bid on a big web design job and got it! Oh, sh*t. When the class was done I knew two things: I’d NEVER be a front-end web developer and it’s all down to who you know.
To get optimal results in any web project you must be collaborative and work with a trusted network of web professionals.
With that web job looming, I consulted Google and came across a virtual coaching course called 10K boot camp offered by Ugurus. The boot camp was ten weeks long, once a week for two hours on zoom with five other students and a mentor.
My mentor had a sales background and ran a virtual Magento agency. The focus was on the business of running a web agency. I also met a developer in the program to help me build that big site looming over me…thank goodness!
“I had many sleepless nights thinking I had no idea WTF I was doing.”
Graphic Designer ≠ Web Designer
The only crossover between print and web design is an understanding of layout, typography, and images but a print design background can actually be a hindrance to effective web design.
Print, albeit there are many variations; sheet-fed, digital, and cold press web, is always the physical requirement of ink on a substrate. The content is mostly consumed from left to right in the western world.
Web design has many more complexities and considerations: content management systems (CMS), user interface design (UI), user experience design (UX), web accessibility, security, devices, maintenance, load speed, compatibility, SEO, interactivity (video/audio) and life cycle. A website is never “put to bed”. The content is consumed in multiple ways and the designer has to integrate all of these considerations into the build.
The more web jobs I took on, the more clear it became to me. I wasn’t simply doing web design along with graphic design. I was pivoting to a new career. For the first time, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to be because being a web designer is as vague as being a commercial artist but I'm not 15, I'm 50.
Bye Gauley
Sometimes the magnitude of my ignorance would overwhelm me like a metaphorical white water rafting trip on the Upper Gauley. I’d navigate through some class fours and fives feeling confident about my direction, only to be jettisoned out of the raft at Pillow Rock, a badass class five rapid, violently spinning under the water, hoping they wouldn’t have to drain the river to retrieve my body.
Melodramatic I know, but I’ll never forget the sleepless nights and sheer dread I experienced thinking I had no idea wtf I was doing. The irony of getting educated is the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew.
I’d been fortunate to recognize a skill set at an early age and single-mindedly able to pursue, cultivate and monetize it. Most people don’t have that clarity early on. They get into a line of work based on their parent’s wishes or some other reason like drugs and alcohol, their now-ex-partner or happenstance.
Maybe that’s why it felt tenuous to me. The thought of doing something else successfully felt implausible. I didn’t have a lifetime to learn this either. I’d have to get up to speed quickly. < Reading that line makes me chuckle.
Squarespace -> WordPress -> Squarespace
Evelyn and Troy Dean at WordCamp NYC, July 2016
My first attempt at a client website was in Squarespace in 2011. It was awful, both the platform and my design. After my General Assembly class and Ugurus boot camp, I decided I would use WordPress since it’s the most commonly used platform for building websites.
In 2017 I enrolled in WP Elevation which included six-course modules, mini-courses, coaching, videos, a private Facebook group, and the amazing Aussie Troy Dean! His course was thorough enough to get me up to speed with the basics of running a WordPress agency.
I was accepting more web design jobs in my own business as well as taking on bigger jobs with a friend where I’d do the design and she’d build the sites. I also started to work with yet another friend on developing a more complex WordPress membership site.
These combined efforts pushed me to seek out more knowledge and people, research the industry and build my skills as a web designer and digital strategist — all while raising teenagers and running a busy graphic design business. I have to remind myself of this because I can be very self-critical that I’m not further ahead.
My mother-in-law gave me sage advice when I had my first baby, “You can do it all, just not at the same time.” It’s a mantra I still have on rotation.
“You can do it all, just not at the same time.”
After being active in the WordPress community, attending WordCamps and meetups and designing several WordPress sites of varying complexity using various builders over the course of six years, I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons I still didn’t love web design is because I don’t like working in WordPress.
There I said it.
I’d always thought it was my own ineptitude and I just needed more practice. I’ve come full circle back to Squarespace (SQSP), which is vastly different than it was in 2011. I love the elegance and simplicity of the interface. Are there things that WordPress is better for? Absolutely, but for me, less is more.
I’ve made peace with building my current web design business on a SaaS-based hosting platform vs. open source. It’s better suited to small businesses and entrepreneurs, my target market. Read why we recommend SQSP here.
The quest to stay relevant is ongoing and persistent.
Pivoting from one career to another is never straightforward
I took classes, bought all kinds of software, tried various platforms and had several mentors and friends who have helped me along the way. I always kept the same goal in mind: to monetize my web design skills enough to build a sustainable business.
It’s taken eight years but I’m finally on my way. It’s not that I know everything but I know what to do now when I don’t. I don’t suffer as much from shiny object syndrome either because I know there is always something better out there but I’m good with what I have… for now. I also know which jobs NOT to take, a hard-won skill too.
Check, please!
So how much did it cost to pivot from graphic designer to web designer over these last eight years?
Not including my very first attempt, a Macromedia Director class I took in 1993 that I didn’t mention or that 2001 class I did mention ($1,155], I’ve spent approximately $21K (a year of in-state college tuition in the U.S.).
This includes all the aforementioned courses, masterminds, WordCamps plus various online courses; Lynda.com [before it became free through the local library], Udemy, Treehouse and other one-off courses. It was money well-spent and has enabled me to continue to earn a decent income that I can leverage as long as I stay engaged.
I’m also connected to various communities of experts that I wouldn’t have had access to had I not sought out different methodologies and been dogged in finding my sweet spot.
Best show in town!
The most surprising part for me is I really love what I do even more than graphic design now because of the complexities, strategy, and reactions. When I did/do graphic design for organizations and mid-size businesses, of course, the client is happy when the printed piece delivers, but small business clients actually tear up after getting a digital makeover and their site launches. We create not just joy but RELIEF — it’s the best-unscripted show in town!
Encore
Recently, we were doing web audits at a women’s entrepreneurial weekend retreat and a woman about my vintage came over to have us to review her site. She is an ahmazing interior designer of kitchens and bathrooms for clients who are aging in place.
She said, “I used to work for the government for thirty years, this is my encore career.” I had never heard that word used to describe a second career.
I love it.
It says no matter what you used to do or how long you did it, you too can pivot and have a second chance, an encore! It won’t be linear, nor easy, but you can finally be what you want to be now that you’re all grown up!
“...no matter what you used to do or how long you did it, you too can pivot and have an encore career!”
Fun Eeee
My next chapter includes more writing. I took a screenwriting class in college and exclusively wrote comedies so I thought a great way to jump start my writing habit would be to take a Stand Up Comedy class.
It was time consuming to write, rewrite, than rewrite some more. Not to mention rehearsing that five-minute set over and over again. The experience, albeit really fun and a little nerve-wracking, definitely dissuaded me from entertaining another pivot. Why?
Because open mike night opportunities for the newbie comic happen way too late at night AND I’m finally hitting my stride with my day job. It did do what I wanted though, to get me writing more. You can watch my comedy debut here.
Open for business…and so much more
I had a bracelet made with my word for this year.
If there is anything you’ve read in this article that you want clarification on, please ask. My word for the year is “OPEN”. I want to be more transparent, open to sharing more, open to opportunities, insights, and input. I’m open to know your thoughts and thank you for reading mine. 👐
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