Drawar

I've been drawing and sketching since I was very young, but also had a great affinity for math and science. The web lets me merge those two interests, programming and design.

When I was in high school (oh lord, over 12 years ago!), back in '95/'96 I got hooked on building silly little fan sites for all my favorite shows. Then that developed into designing horribly flashy mini pixel animated icons for people to use on such sites as Livejournal. Then I got involved in several online forum communities and got hooked on CSS. Since then that's been my life.

For a long time I designed and hung out with a really cool group of people on a website called "Beautify" (later changed it's name to "Primp My Blog") which was basically advocating web standards and beautiful designs for online diaries (that's what blogs were called back in the day). Then I started pushing myself, picking up clients and here I am today. I've worked at Treehugger.com, and after taking a break for the last year and just freelancing I'm about to start at a super cool startup in Manhattan doing what I love best, designing and coding.

i kind of fell into it. i was working as an instructor of first-year comp (that writing class everyone hates) and we were required to also teach our students computer basics. after a year of everyone losing their syllabus and therefore thinking they didn't have to do the assignments, i put my syllabus up on the web.

since i've been playing with computers since the c64, this was a level of coding i could quickly get into and learn to manipulate. soon, i was responsible for the department head's web presence, our department's site and a couple of others as well. i am more of a designer than a developer at the moment as i've fallen somewhat behind on css and other bits of alphabet soup as well. i enjoy coding a site, but i have even more fun looking at what the architecture will need to include and developing the GUI rather than full-bore coding.

I fell into it too; at uni they tried to teach us and failed. So I ended up teaching myself and just ran with it (well, teaching myself = Oli taught me).

A couple of years later I'm hired as a professional and really happy about it.

I got into web site design because it was a natural progression from being a graduate of a graphic design program. Interestingly enough my program didn't have much of a web design component to it (and this was only 7 years ago!) so through additional classes and personal tinkering I got really interested in designing for the web.

What I like most about web design work is how your are operating with a fluid document set. Creating something that is flexible, organized, attractive, and strategic is a challenge that I find exciting and fun every time I embark on a new project.

www.nelsondesignstudios.com

I meet allot of folks who work online and have a degree in some other field of study. I'm no exception :)

I came out of high school with CAD under my belt so I naturally went to college for Architectural Engineering and later became a Psychologist. In my free time I would draw (traditional and digital) and/or play around on the computer. I started using Photoshop back when version 2 was the new hotness and from there, I took my experiences and talents and started freelancing as a web designer.

I can say I'm blessed to get paid to do my hobby! For me this gig is never work.

I didn't exactly "choose" this, just fell into it really. I wanted a website to showcase my quilts and textile art, and give potential students and/or buyers a way to contact me. I couldn't afford to pay someone else to do it, and though my mom was doing a bit of web design here and there and created the first version of my site, it wasn't long before I wanted to do it myself.

I started working with PHP just as a way to make site development easier, and now I'm completely hooked. Web design and programming is a lot like quilting to me: lots of little pieces that you have to fit together a certain way to make it look good and perform well. Creativity and skill wrapped up in a (mostly) neat package. What's not to love?

When I started this, I wanted to use it as a way to get my name and work out there on the web, but the promoting the quilting to make money at it was the main thing. Now I have a hard time deciding which I like better, and I make more money working on the Web than I do quilting.

My education is in software engineering. I got into web development mainly because although I'm an engineer by trade, I also love art/graphics/design and the web is a place where I have more control over both visual and behavioral aspects. All of my web knowledge is self taught though (either from books, research, or prototyping).

Web has suddenly given me a chance to reach so many users - business models look so much more bright now!

:-)
Maku
http://www.apnabill.com - My Startup
http://www.makuchaku.info/blog - My Blog

I didn't choose web design/development as my career, but I can tell you pretty much how I got here in a series of steps :)

1. I'd always drawn, whether it was caricatures of my friends, or comic book characters I liked. I also liked videogames, having played since the days of the Commodore 64.
2. In school my art teacher hated my work and my design teacher loved my work, so I knew I was onto something! I went to college to study graphic design.
3. At college I discovered the mac, and took a friend's advice to take a degree course in multimedia design.
4. My university course was many concerned with creating CD-ROMs with Macromedia Director, but the decline of CDs and my growing interest in web design made the next step pretty obvious.

I've been working in industry since '99. These days I'm fascinated by usability and the social web. I've no idea what I'll be doing in ten years!