Russell:
What a difference of-
Tom:
In three months the whole world changes in web. I think it’s kind of impressive that people are realizing that that’s something they can offer, and you can probably get a decent grounding at university level, and maybe in sixth form college, or whatever …
Russell:
I should think so.
Tom:
… in the web now.
Russell:
Other than formal education stuff, what other ways are there would you say of people getting experience with web?
Tom:
I think that you summed it up earlier and the way that both of us have learned, and I think many people do, is just by doing stuff. Doing a course is great, so signing up for any of those online academies, online whatever. They’re going to teach you a lot, and certainly looking at a video. There’s probably even stuff on YouTube or whatever that you can find for free. A lot of those online things aren’t expensive and obviously if you’re young your budgets not going to be high, but you’re probably talking about thirty quid a month or something, or maybe even less, I don’t even know how much [crosstalk 00:15:22] things cost.
Russell:
Or less.
Tom:
Doing that will be a great place to start, and they’ll give you the basics, but really one of the great and bad things about the web is that you’re solving problems, so it’s not like if you do this you get a website. It’s not the way it works, right?
Russell:
Yeah.
Tom:
Really the only way to do it is like, “Yeah. Hey, I need a forum, right.” I’ve got to learn how to set up my own server. I’ve got to get the forum software. I’ve got to install it. That’s half the problem, right?
Russell:
Yeah.
Tom:
I know many, many times I struggled with just the basics of that. How to connect to [our 00:15:53] FTP was a big problem. Now I look back and laugh. That’s the way to do it. Have little projects and it kind of ties in the side projects thing that you and Chris talked about recently. I’ve learned so much over the years of … I wanted to do a blog about this, and I wanted to design it in a certain way, so I went off and did it on my own, because you can’t really wait around for a client to tell you to do that.
Russell:
Exactly.
Tom:
Especially if it’s something where you’re trying to learn. It is quite scary to take on the prospect of doing something for a client and not really know how to do it, and the danger is that you won’t work it out, and then you’re going to be like, “Uh. Okay. We’ve got a problem here.” You might have taken money already and all that kind of thing. With a side project, with something like that where you want to learn. Just go out there and do it. It’s brilliant. I’ve done that so many times. You must have done the same, right?
Russell:
Yeah. Definitely, that and also I guess I was quite lucky in starting that I had clients to work with immediately, and I think also that early experience of what it’s like to design for someone as well is a big thing, because if you’re going into that [crosstalk 00:16:57] unless you’re doing project stuff you’re always doing that. Having that experience of like translating what someone is telling you that they want into, not only what you can provide, but also what you think that that should be, and that whole process of morphing someone’s idea into what you’re capable of and what you can do is a massive thing as well, and getting experience of that is huge.
Tom:
That’s a huge part of the job. Many people can design and develop. I wouldn’t say it’s a skill that’s particularly difficult it just takes a while to learn it all and there’s so much to it that you’ve just got to knuckle down and learn that stuff. That comes over time. You will do a bunch of work and we always still learn on every project we do.
Russell:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Tom:
I certainly do anyway. That other side of things. I’m similar to you that I always had freelance stuff on the go and worked in the web from managing websites for companies for a long, long time, but everyone that comes along you learn a bit more about that client interaction. You can be the best designer in the world but if you can’t deal with a client and work out what they want then you’re basically the worst.
Russell:
Exactly.
Tom:
Because that’s the important thing, and we’re probably both quite similar that we take pride in our work but you can’t be too proud of it, because if you put something in front of someone and they say, “I don’t like it,” and you take it personally that’s not cool, right?
Russell:
It feels like a stabbing.
Tom:
It does, and the first time you do that, God, it’s terrible. You’ve spent ages on this thing and you think it’s brilliant and they basically tell you it’s complete crap. That’s hard, but you certainly get to learn to deal with that. That’s another side of things that people need to learn. If they’re going to get into the creative industry, whatever it is, people are going to have a go at what you’ve done.
Russell:
In that you just kind of learn to, well defend might be the wrong word, but justify …
Tom:
Justify. Yeah.
Russell:
… what it is that you’ve done for somebody.