Learn HTML and CSS!
Knowing how to use HTML and CSS are very valuable skills for a designer to have in their toolbox. By having a working knowledge of these languages you can open more doors professionally, earn more money, and perhaps most important of all, enjoy more freedom. Freedom over your schedule, your location, and the work you do. I should know, I was destined for a life of low-wage labor until I discovered web design.
I taught myself how to write HTML and CSS. I was captivated by it, really. I love how I can manipulate the images on a screen just like I can make music come out of a guitar or a drawing come to life just by moving my hands the right way. But unlike music or art, coding was weird and not so intuitive to me because I couldn’t touch it.
As a creative, I found certain aspects of coding mysterious until I found a way to make them make sense to me visually! I’m a visual person, and if you’re reading this then I bet you are too. And you can learn to code. I have created online classes geared toward visual learners like artists, musicians, and designers. I’ll tell you… no, I’ll show you the why and how of basic web design, and finally it will make sense to you.
Super! What do I do now?
Learn HTML - I have a class on Basic Web Design for Creatives, Visual Learners, and Everybody Else. I explain the basics - the how and the why - of coding for the web. This class is for anyone that wants to learn how to code up a basic webpage from scratch, and understand how all the pieces work together. In less than an hour, you can have a simple but fully functioning website! Take a look at the class and fully understand foundational HTML.
Learn CSS - If you know a little about HTML and you want to expand your understanding of CSS, you can quickly gain some nuts-and-bolts working knowledge about styles and stylesheets. In this class I show you how a webpage breaks down into two types of boxes; those that want to be next to one another, and those that want to stack. By combining those two types of boxes inside one another and applying some layout styles, you can achieve any type of layout that you want. Learn basic CSS Layout for Creatives.
Learn to use Git - Understand the power of Git and GitHub as tools for collaboration and creation, and how it acts like a time machine, or like “Cmd + Z” on steroids. If you’re a designer that works closely with developers, this is a fantastic tool to add to your arsenal. But even if you’re a writer or anyone that wants to be able to save, retrieve, and merge their work as they create - you should know about Git. See how Git can supercharge the way you work.
Take all the classes for $10
Git & GitHub for Creatives, and Basic Web Design are classes offered on Skillshare.com. You can take these classes and literally thousands of others on Skillshare, all for less than $10 a month.
Learn tech from a creative perspective
This class was created by a designer for anyone that learns better by seeing as opposed to just reading.
When I first encountered Git, I had a reeeeeally hard time understanding how to use it. To me it was abstract and nebulous. I would type commands in to the terminal that I read in some tutorial, and fire them out in to the void without really understanding what I was doing. Sometimes they worked, sometimes... not so much.
One day, a developer on my team finally someone sat down with me and drew me a picture, and “bam!” I got it! This class gives you a picture, a mental model, to hang your workflow on so that you can contribute effectively to a codebase with others, or just organize and back up your own work. It even has a step-by-step cheat sheet to follow until git has become second nature.
Testimonials
“I struggled with learning Git more than I ever did learning to code. I’m a visual thinker and I just couldn’t see it. This course helped me conceptualize Git, repos and collaborative coding better than any other resource I found. I highly recommend it to anyone as not just supplemental learning, but as a starting point.”
“Stunning animations and engaging narrative. An essential video on learning Git/GitHub for early stage developers and experts alike.”
About Me
MY NAME IS Marc Nischan
I'm what you would call "a maker" and I love to share what I've learned. Most of that falls at the intersection of tech and art. I'm a self-taught web designer and front-end developer and overall a hands-on visual learner. My hope is that I can make it easier for other visual learners and "artsy" types to learn to code by sharing some of the concepts that I had to learn through much trial and error.