Career Guide: A day in the life of a web designer

I feel like an idiot when the pretty girl who recently joined comes over to ask me about a CSS syntax.

A day in the life of …

Welcome to the world of Furqan, a web designer.

11.30 AM: Carpool partner makes me wait for 20 minutes now. We are going to be late for the project meeting. Both of us were up till 4.00am playing Angry Birds but still we need to be on time.

After an exchange of colourful words, I ask my carpool partner why is he so dressed up. He’s wearing the same tie and shirt that he wore at a colleague’s valima last Saturday. I’m wearing the same jeans I’ve been wearing the whole week and a Bon Jovi T-shirt.

12.00 PM: Breakfast and then deciding music list for the day since I’m the official DJ of the design firm. Carpool partner is deeply embarrassed. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he thought the client meeting was today. Now everyone’s asking, “So how was the interview?”

12.30 PM: Meeting begins on the best project of my life, I’ve even been dreaming about it. It’s the website of the all-time popular music show that is on air these days. For this project everyone sits late because no one wants to miss even a second of the discussions going on.

2.00 PM: I scribble on my notepad that I need to add on my CV that I am the team leader of this project which means I am responsible for designing, planning user experience, coding and content management.

2.40 PM: Right now I’m trying to remove the bugs that were on the web pages of the first episode. After I am done with that I have to start working on uploading the new content. I get to see the episodes before anyone does so it is like a 007 job! I have been sworn to secrecy, but of course I make sure to brag about it to my non-designer friends.

3.35 PM: Chatter boxes all around me, but I try to focus on my work — a problem I need to resolve ASAP. The files sizes are heavy which means it takes a lot of time to download them, and that means there will be a lot of load on the server.

If I compress the files too much it will compromise the sound quality and that would be unfair to the customers and the client, especially since the client is giving out the content free-of-cost to the public.

3.51 PM: Carpool partner informs me that there is a client on the phone. It’s the fire-breathing dragon-ladies; I’d rather talk to those credit-card recovery guys than this annoying pair. “Yeh sahi nahi lag raha hai” (It isn’t according to their standards).

4.10: While talking to one of the dragon ladies I accidentally knock over the Pepsi bottle on to my T-shirt. Now Bon Jovi and I are a sticky mess. I try washing it off but now there’s a round wet patch on my stomach area.

I feel like even more of an idiot when the pretty girl who recently joined comes over to ask me about a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) syntax. In between dabbing my T-shirt with tissues and trying to recall the syntax I scare her off. “Great going”, snickers carpool partner. I hate him!

Key skills required to be a Front-end, User Interface Web Designer:

1)   Adept at XHTML, HTML, CSS3, DOTNET, PHP, JAVA.

2)   Well-versed in Photoshop and Dream-weaver.

3)   Above-average creative abilities.

4)   Degree in Computer science or IT.

The writer is a personal branding consultant



Published in The Express Tribune, July 16^th, 2011.