Being a professional web designer is, as the saying goes, nice work if you can get it. So how do you get it?
Unsurprisingly, I get asked this a lot. Truth is, I don't know. I just know how I did it.
I approached my own then-current employers, SSC, the publishers of Linux Journal. They were just about to launch a new magazine about web development, to be entitled WEBsmith. They wanted to hire someone to assist the editors, and to be their new webmaster.
I was answering phones and e-mail for them taking orders at this
point, but I convinced them that even though I was just a lowly customer
service rep, and had no professional web experience, I was the one they
were looking for.
How? By putting together a set of web pages that made my case for me. Yes, this was a lot of work for a long-shot chance, but it impressed them. (If you look over these pages, by the way, please note that some of the links won't work any more, and that SSC doesn't even publish WEBsmith magazine any more. I include this here for purely historical reasons, and to demonstrate that a little chutzpah can sometimes open doors.)
Parts of this proposal I'm still proud of; parts of it embarrass me a little. I keep being tempted to go in and clean it up a little bit, but I want to leave it just as it was for historical reasons.
At any rate — with no further ado, here's the proposal.