Welcome to the self-employed club, Baxter, and to Refresh Austin! I'd say you might want to come to our December meetup (an announcement should be going out right after Thanksgiving) where you can meet many of your techie colleagues.
My experience is that some generalization is required, but having a niche that you do extremely well has been that boost that gets you a leg up on possible competitors. There are many many coders/designers out there who can do many things ok. I think it's the ones who can also do one or two things extremely well who get the job. The can-do attitude is invaluable, too. Clients / employers want to know you're a confident & positive person. Designers / coders are going to continue to see the lines blurred in their fields, but the ones who learn or remember their design principles, coding fundamentals, theory, etc. will have an edge. Cheers! Pat On Nov 24, 2009, at 11:41 AM, Baxter wrote: > Hello, I am new here and actually just stumbled across Refresh Austin > on Twitter, from what I gather it sounds like an amazing tool to bring > Austin professionals together. > > Recently like many of you I was laid off. I have been freelancing > while I actively look for new opportunities but it seems now more than > ever businesses are trying to consolidate heads and being a graphic > designer is hardly about designing and is more about being a one stop > marketing shop. It seems like so many jobs require you to be a great > print designer, proficient backend web programer, know server > technologies, be able to copywrite, be an illustrator, and be a good > photographer. > > I have a "can do attitude," and consider myself to have a pretty broad > skill set but am starting to find this is pretty unreasonable to think > anyone can excel in all of these individual areas. Especially the > mental/education disconnect between creative design and backend > programming. > > How do you think this gap will be bridged in the coming years? Will > designers be forced to be equally backend programmers to stay employed > or will programmers be forced to learn design? Will they go back to > being two very diverse fields of expertise? Or will new technologies > solve the problem and make it easier for both designers and > programmers? > > Would love to hear your opinions. > > Baxter Orr > www.baxterorr.com > www.twitter.com/baxterorr -- Pat Ramsey Web Design and Accessibility Specialist [email protected] @pat_ramsey Code that works,… beautifully http://slash25.com -- Our Web site: http://www.RefreshAustin.org/ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Refresh Austin" group. [ Posting ] To post to this group, send email to [email protected] Job-related postings should follow http://tr.im/refreshaustinjobspolicy We do not accept job posts from recruiters. [ Unsubscribe ] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] [ More Info ] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Refresh-Austin
