I’m not to familiar with these courses but considering you said you have little to no computing / photoshop experience but want to shorted the learning curve I think that it could potentially be useful to have a structured course with a dialog channel to a tutor. My anticipation would be that this would help (I hope)to lay the ground works for further learning.

I always advocate creating your own projects in order to learn, this gives you the opportunity to create challenges for your self and by hands on exercise you will learn the craft more fully. With your background as a photographer you already have a great project to start with, why not set out to create your own photography portfolio, perhaps using something like wordpress as a content management system at some point. The added benefit in doing this is that you could carve out a piece of the pie in creating photography web sites for your contacts.

I actually have no pieces of paper in web design and am all self taught, my degree is as a Fine Art Sculptor. I was offered a place on a Masters Degree in Multimedia once but my employer wouldn’t allow me the time to go to lectures so that never happened.

Is it feasible to take a course like this and expect to be able to make a living out of freelancing or get a job and make a living that way? I doubt it, unless you have an amazing amount of talent, luck and connections. It might take a little while to build up the skills and expereinces needed to open doors.

Whatever you chose to do the best of luck to you and let me know how you go.

Firstly, thanks for being so open and helpful with this blog – it’s nice when experts are willing to spend some time, imparting their experience and knowledge to others. I have a question which I would appreciate your help with please. I have recently looked into the possibility of becoming a web designer and have done some research on the internet – which is how I found you! I’m sure I would enjoy the design and creative elements and have a good eye as I have previously been a semi-professional (part-time) social photographer. I am not saying that I will definitely go ahead with this, but it is certainly something that I will seriously consider further.

I am thinking about a home study course with homelearningcollege which is an Adobe Dreamweaver & Flash course (which includes HTML and CSS). This should take 6 months to finish with 12 hours studying a week and after successfully completing all the practical/written assessments (with the help of a tutor by e-mail and telephone at any time if required), you receive a certificate and status of Adobe Certified Associate. I would be learning totally from scratch, as I don’t really have any previous computer experience and no Photoshop skills at all.

My question is – and please excuse the long introduction: As I would be doing this to change my career, earn a living and preferably work for myself, how feasible would it be to study in this way and then expect to be able to set up on my own straight away? Would you advise gaining some experience first, working as a designer with a company for a year or two, or perhaps setting up at the same time on a part-time basis? Obviously, the major problem would be not having a significant portfolio to begin with (which is what I experienced with my photography at first).

My other question is: Could I actually earn ‘enough’ by being self employed? It looks like it is possible to earn ‘enough’ being employed, but like most other creative fields, the competition is immense, which was the main reason I sadly had to give up my photography.

I am also concerned that although I may be able to do this type of course, I might not really be able to fully take it all in and remember everything, in order to then put it into practice. I know I can learn in a traditional teaching environment (as I studied photography in the evenings at a local college for just over 2 years), but aged almost 39, I doubt that studying would get any easier for me. Alternatively I suppose I could look into evening classes, which would be more structured and perhaps more motivating, although I have noticed a few where there are no final qualifications at the end, which I feel are required.

Ideally, If I could plan this, I would just like to learn in as short a time as possible and then work for myself, which is most important to me.

Thank you for reading this and for your assistance. By the way, I like your website!

Best wishes,

Marc Harris