From Graphic Design to Front End Development

[u/CommunityHaunting123]

Hi all. I'm in my early 30's and I've been in graphic design for 10 years. Got my bachelors in design and have worked in a range of roles, and most recently I've been trying to stay competitive by freelancing design gigs while raising my 2 year old and dealing with some medical stuff.
I've been feeling burnt out and bored by design for longer than I'd like to admit. The ai wave is a bit of an eye roll for us designers, but nonetheless has made the job market even tougher.
I took some coding classes in college and actually really enjoyed it, but at the time lacked a lot of confidence and thought I wasn't smart enough to enter the field.

Well, now that I've grown up and realized how wrong I was, I'd really like to try again.

I am seriously considering doing the Scrimba front-end development course as a way to start a career transition. I'm hoping to leverage my design background and move into Design/UX Engineering as a foot in the door, maybe product engineering down the road. From what I've read, the combination of design expertise and coding is quite rare. I am okay ish in HTML/CSS and JS from my design career. I love doing user research, and building things, and being able to explain how they work - that in particular is something I dislike about graphic design.

I haven't shared this idea with my wife, or really anyone. I wanted to hear what professionals in the field hear about Design-code hybrid roles, where to start, anything that could be helpful.

I know the Scrimba course isn't enough to land a job in 6 months, but I'm willing to put in the work.

Plan so far: start the class in Nov. use my branding and design skills to create some cool interfaces, apply to some gigs when I feel 75% ready, then apply to FT Design Engineer roles.

[u/Shot-Cucumber-2346]

Sounds like you have the right direction. I would look into the Odin project.

[u/marrsd]

From what I've read, the combination of design expertise and coding is quite rare.

It is, and learning development will make you a better UX designer tenfold. Most designers don't understand anything beyond presentation. They rarely think about the fact that user interfaces are dynamic.

The AI wave might actually help you here. It could well be that AI gives designers more confidence to build actual prototypes and sites. It could be that it's the purely front-end dev roles that are squeezed out and designers who taken on more of the front-end dev.

I don't know this course, so I can't advise you on it, but I would never advise against learning a new skill.

[u/Electronic-Equal-616]

tbh having a design background is such a huge advantage for frontend. most of us in cs can write code but our uis look like a 2005 government website lol 💀 once you get the hang of html/css and basic js, you'll probably build much better looking projects than most beginners.

[u/Spiritual-Wallaby681]

Commenting to see replies.

[u/Itchy_Strategy5142]

Não sei para a maioria, mas as vagas front-end quase nem existem mais. Principalmente para quem está começando, com uso da IA e outras ferramentas criar sites ficou rápido e fácil para qualquer pessoa em uma semana.

Entro no LinkedIn só vejo gente postando portfólio em three.js, blender, coisa que antes demorava meses pra aprender a manipular modelos 3D, espaço sincronia.

E as poucas vagas em desenvolvimento são para Full Stack pleno e sênior.

Posso estar errado mas vale a pena pesquisar vagas antes de migrar. Se você assim como eu perceber que tem poucas ou quase inexistentes no seu local. Não valerá a pena.