The industry shift towards all things digital has been more noticeable than ever this last 6 months. Having seen a sharp drop on traditional graphic design and artworking vacancies, and a significant increase in web related roles, we figured it would be wise to get another knowledge booster session.
Buckling under the persuasive pressure of our MD’s charm, Martyn (the designer and builder of our website) kindly offered to spare us a few hours of his time. The aim of the session, to recap on existing technology and practices, update us on new advances, and to run through the design / build / development cycle of a typical e-commerce webiste.
Half an hour in, after a seemingly endless string of unanswerable questions, he appeared to be doubting the sanity of agreeing to take us on. Mercifully the crowd settled down and Martyn got into his flow. The session got going in earnest and we were quickly immersed in source code, having the intricacies of CSS and div tag nesting explained in detail. This then lead on to the next stage, outlining the process the developer then goes through to link the front end of the site to a database (covering PHP / ASP / .NET, and also SQL / MySQL), and the associated problems one would expect. In addition Martyn talked through the difference between Flash Designers and Flash Developers, a gap which has become much more apparent since the advent of Actionscript 3.
Whilst I am not and probably never will be a web designer, sessions like this are essential in keeping us up to speed with what seems to be an ever evolving discipline. If I’m to offer the kind of recruitment service my clients and candidates are looking for, it is imperative that I retain this level of focus. Regular training, even just to recap, proves every time that it is worth it’s weight in gold. Not sure Martyn would agree so readily!
Andy Chesters