I’m writing this on the bus. I have to say I left the debate early and thought I’d post my opinion on it all here.

Digital by design was a sort of industry vs academia debate that focussed on the design needs of the industry and the contribution the unis make to generating talent.

It came at the end of a careers fair and portfolio clinic, something miggle.co.uk would have been keen to be involved with. When millions of UK web users engage with content we create every day, when staff of ours move on to the likes of Yahoo! or MSN as their next move, when what we specialise in leaves us fairly uniquely positioned in the town, notwithstanding my own experience in small business mentoring and having written one of the town’s leading colleges first web design course you’d think, from a strategic point of view, we’d be a good fit. But that’s clearly just one way thinking on my part. And it’s slightly unrelated, so rant over…

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was related to Andy Budd, Clearlefts’s Creative Director. He was talking about himself as an example of a generation of web practitioners, who were self-taught, starting as they did at a time when there were no web based courses. I’ve seen some of Andy’s first designs, and they’re a world apart from those churned out by the leading company he’s built up today, so he’s a clear example of someone who’d learnt well on the job. One key point he mentioned was a survey in which 75% of 19 year olds had said their education had been no help in them getting a job – and he was comparing this also with the lack of relevant skills he saw coming out of the unis. I’d be interested to see what the same 19 year olds say in 10 years time by the way.

As a largely self-taught practitioner myself I can definitely see a value in my education – but I think mine came at a time before unis were obsessed with churning out people with what it considered were vocational skills. My education I think was just about giving me a broad all round understanding and interest in the world around me. Those skills helped me to be a self starter and it’s actually those fundamental skills I find lacking in many people we interview. That’s not a fault that can be laid at the feet of the unis – its more the fault of a fundamental shift in what education, even from an early age, is all about.

At the end of the day, great designers will shine through somehow. If the unis can’t churn them out, they’ll find a route elsewhere. One academic guy mentioned that design based courses were hampered because they sat in humanities. If they sat in engineering he ventured it could all be different. That’s a fair point. We currently have an intern at miggle with an Astrophysics degree. He didn’t learn to be a web developer, but the thinking processes he can apply to online engineering are spot on. There are some things the unis will always be able to do better than others – science and engineering I think are good examples.

The biggest irony of the evening to me was that one of the design experts from the industry was talking all about the need for unis to focus students on details, not the big ideas, while sat next to another expert whose Flash based site didn’t work on an iPhone. But that’s just pedantic detail on my part, and I only make it because I see it as slightly ironic we missed out again to be able to make a contribution earlier in the day to the industry body we always do our best to support.

So, if there’s anyone reading this who was at the event who missed out an a portfolio review, please feel free to get in touch with me, I’d be happy to help out.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

This is a follow on from my last post – Tips for starting your online career. In terms of the types of functions we hire – let’s look at what any website needs to be successful: A great technical infrastructure, good looks, content that resonates with its target users and a growing and engaged audience. Finally, someone has to manage that entire process.

What we look for in a web developer
miggle is predominantly a PHP / MySQL-led business in terms of development and because PHP/MySQL is freely available we’d expect prospective web developers to have applications to demo. They might look shocking (the apps, not the developers), but we are not hiring you to be a designer. We’d probably want to see some ability at organising content, but the content in itself doesn’t have to be great – as we’ve got others who can write that, but the more your portfolio can show an empathy or knowledge of the elements that sit on top of the technical infrastructure, the better, in our experience.

Getting a web designer job
In terms of a site looking good, it’s all about the ‘front-end’ – the parts of the site that the end user interacts with directly. So a ‘web designer’ job isn’t just graphic design placed on a computer screen, there must be the ability to manipulate front-end code, e.g. HTML, CSS, etc. I think to be an effective web designer you must have a good overall knowledge of the technical infrastructure and some appreciation of information design and architecture – so in some ways it’s more of a ‘Front End Developer’ job.

miggle would have to get a lot bigger for us to hire a dedicated Information Architect (IA) – someone skilled in the art and science of organising and labelling websites to support findability and usability – but I think you can go a long way to being a great IA through gaining experience reworking front-end code to present efficient user experiences.

If you are a great graphic designer, but all you can do is the pictures, then I think you’d need to be bringing more to the table than just stunning designs if you are looking for a full time role on the web – but you may find you can cut it as a freelancer. Most of the pure designers we hire, we hire on that basis.

Getting a web journalism or content management job
Increasingly businesses are getting to grips with the fact that it’s the quality and relevance of your content that gets your site visibility in search engines, not back links and SEO sleight of hand.

At miggle we employ a lot of content managers, editors and copywriters. Many of these are fully trained journalists, but actually, their value to miggle and our clients is their ability to move users round a site. There are still jobs for journalists in the online arena, but they exist in the areas where editorial voice and political or social positioning are key. But whether you’re exposing yet more state corruption or seeing how often you can write the phrase ‘0% credit cards’ into your copy without it reading poorly or Google thinking you’re trying to hoodwink search, if you are writing for the web, you are going to need to know your way around a Content Management System (CMS). And depending on who you work for, that CMS is either going to be a dream to use, or a bitch, and you won’t know which one till you start using it.

At best, you’ll be in a position where you just have to think about your content, as the CMS will do all the legwork for you. At worst, you’ll need to learn some Photoshop skills pretty quick and some basic HTML. miggle’s first law of content management states that the bigger a website / business, the more proprietary (and therefore often painful) its CMS is to use. These guys are in the business of providing innovation and differentiation on a daily basis, so it’s very difficult for the technology behind it not to be playing catch up at some point, or being bent in some direction it was never intended to take.

Sales and marketing jobs online
Finally – getting that site in front of its target audience. Well, if everyone else up to this point has done a great job, then you are well on your way. A site built on a solid technical infrastructure, which is usable and looks good, with relevant content will be one that works well in organic search. But there’s still a job to be done in finding more audience for it.

We’re not at a stage yet – either at miggle, or maybe the industry a a whole, where we can wave goodbye to good old fashioned sales and marketing techniques, but gone are the days where your value as a marketing exec is going to be measured by the size of your budget. Online is making sales and marketing have to be more accountable. No matter how big your budget is, someone will always have a bigger one and so the trick is to make the most of what you have. While we’re not ready to say goodbye to traditional techniques yet, the most exciting online marketeers are those who can manipulate social networks and use Google like the suite of online apps it is. We don’t expect our online marketeers to do anything else other than build audience, but they have to share as much of a context of the other people’s role in the process as they can – and if they can squeeze a JPG till its pips squeak or mess around with an API then cool, we (and the rest of the online industry) will want you.

Online project management – the ‘internet producer’
Finally, someone has to manage the process. A site is no use to a client till it’s delivered and undelivered projects don’t tend to get paid for.

Several things need to be managed in a web project. Clients, expectations, staff, contractors, requirements, technology, budgets – the list goes on. The person whose head is on the block for delivery may not have written one line of code or content, or saved one image – but without them, there’s no site. If building web sites is about mastering the resources you have at your fingertips then the person who delivers that is as much a web designer as anyone. I, in fact, prefer to call these people ‘producers’. And producers just make stuff happen. If you can do this, and only this, then you can do what’s required.

I hope this has been useful. We’re not on the lookout for anyone right now, but we’d like to hear from people who read this and think this could be them. And, of course, I have to apologise to all the functions we’ve missed, the QAs, the PMs, the GUIs, the illustrators, the animators, the sound and video people – all key skills, all of which show how complex online can be.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

How to avoid the old catch-22: you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job.

When I first started working online, in 1994, all you really needed to know was HTML and how to save JPGs and GIFs. It wasn’t because that was all that web browsers could support – but it wasn’t far off that – and in any case, such was the web’s infancy that those who wanted sites built weren’t looking for much more than a few simple info pages. Web browsers were basic, and so was the software you needed to know to build a page. A Photoshop-esque package and Notepad. That was it. There were no web and new media courses pushing out highly trained graduates every year, so the competition for work was not as fierce.

Web design is a broad church
If you’re graduating in 2009 it’s all completely different. The Internet has become vast and as such the variety of roles within the industry have multiplied exponentially. Of course, you can still have an aspiration to be, and can succeed in being, a ‘web designer’, but the knowledge and experience of various systems and packages will vary hugely from job to job, as will the degree to which you need to be a master of one skill or a jack of all trades. To get that dream job online, you need to try and accrue as much experience as you can – but of course, there’s the old catch-22 that you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job.

So how can you start your online career?
Use the beauty of the web. There are no barriers to entry in terms of making a site. You can still make a site in 2009 in the same way I made my first one in 1994. Sure, that’s going to look shocking, and in any case, you’re probably way beyond that level already, but there is nothing to stop you just building, experimenting, trying things out, dipping into different technologies. If you can build a credible portfolio of sites, be they for mates, family businesses, or if it’s just to try something, anything, in Flash or Dreamweaver, then you will broaden your skills, the stuff you can talk knowledgeably about and you’ll have something to show on your CV and at an interview.

What skills do you need?
Do you aim to become an expert AJAX coder, a PHP developer or a graphic designer? What skills do web agencies and companies look for? It depends very much on the type and size of the company.

Most companies that are involved with online run on extremely tight resources. You may want to be a JavaScript programmer, but there are few firms that can have the luxury of supporting someone in such a dedicated role, and these are likely to be bigger companies. And big firms, unless they have graduate recruitment schemes, are likely to want to see some vocational experience.

Smaller firms prefer all rounders – people who can competently perform a number of duties, show some adaptability and good time management skills. Here the focus will very often be on simply getting stuff done and so, if you can demonstrate projects that you’ve got up and running on your own, you could be well on your way to getting your foot on the ladder.

So, if you are starting out, don’t pigeon hole yourself early on. You may have left uni a great PHP / MySQL developer, but in two years’ time, you could find that your real strength lies in project management, front-end development or information architecture.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.