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About two years ago, I decided to take myself on a journey to teach everything that I need to know about web design and web development. To be honest with you, it was such a rough process given that there were so many highs and lows.
Learn the essential steps to start freelance web design in 2025, from mastering fundamentals to building a unique portfolio and landing your first client.
Key Takeaways
- Strong fundamentals in design tools and concepts are crucial before advancing.
- Learning to code enhances design capabilities and marketability.
- Intentional practice through replication and problem-solving accelerates skill development.
- Unique, problem-solving projects are more valuable than generic technical showcases.
- A focused portfolio aligned with target clients increases chances of landing work.
Summary
- Start by mastering the fundamentals of web design, including tools like Figma, Framer, and Webflow, and design concepts such as user psychology, typography, and visual hierarchy.
- Learn coding basics in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to differentiate yourself and enable custom website functionalities.
- Spend 4 to 6 months deeply understanding design concepts and tools to ensure creative flow is unhindered.
- Constantly build projects by intentionally replicating and studying other designers' work to refine your skills without plagiarizing.
- Use multiple sources of inspiration and combine ideas to create original designs, crediting inspirations properly.
- When stuck on specific design or functionality problems, search for targeted solutions instead of relying solely on courses.
- Avoid generic projects; build unique projects that solve real-life or business problems to stand out in your portfolio.
- Use design brief generators to create meaningful projects that showcase problem-solving skills.
- Keep building side projects even after getting clients to improve skills and maintain a strong digital presence.
- Create a portfolio tailored to your target audience, showcasing relevant projects to attract specific clients.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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But it ultimately felt like I was floating in space trying to find the right thing to learn or trying to find the right thing to do. So in this video, I’d like to share with you guys five of the
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things I would do if I were to start all over from scratch again, from square one, to turn something that used to be my passion to now a full-time thing, charging websites for over 15,000. So the first thing I would do is to get
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the fundamentals right. What I mean by getting the fundamentals right is to dive deep into the basics of web design before you go into the advanced techniques. One of my favorite quotes from the book that I'm currently reading from
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Naval is that foundations are key. It's much better to get extremely good at the foundations before diving deep into things straight away. So just to bring this back to web design itself, what I would do just starting out is to
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dedicate a lot of time getting really good at the tools. Tools like Figma or Framer or Webflow, and get really good and very familiar with those tools. I think it's really important to get comfortable and understand the ins and
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outs of those tools so that it doesn't limit your creative flow. So while you're learning the design tools itself, I think it's also really, really important that you learn design concepts. So learning things about user psychology, layouts, typography, colors, visual hierarchy, and all
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of these design concepts is really important to how you design your work and also helps you think as a web designer. So just to learn all these things I've mentioned so far, you can just learn them on the internet. I think
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there's an abundant amount of resources on the internet and you can't really go wrong with free resources or tutorials on YouTube, or you can also really go wrong with paid courses on like Udemy or Coursera because I think all of those
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resources on the internet or courses on the internet, they all teach you the right fundamentals. I personally think they would help you get started as a web designer. And then another really important thing I think
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all designers need to learn is coding. Learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can set you way apart from other designers because all of the websites you see with really crazy animations or really custom functionality, they all require some
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form of code. So I would highly recommend for you to learn code. In terms of where to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I would recommend taking a look at freeCodeCamp. They have free courses on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and they teach you
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the right foundations. The platform itself is also really interactive, so it's a really nice learning experience. So the goal for this stage is that you spend at least 4 to 6 months to really get a good understanding of design
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concepts and be very familiar with the tools that you use to design websites so that it doesn't hinder your creative flow and hinder your ability to constantly create more and more and more. That would lead us to the next thing that I
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would do, which is to keep building. So after you've mastered the fundamentals, what you need to do next is to constantly create. How I would like to approach this personally is to replicate other designers' and developers' works, and you
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want to do this very intentionally. So try to really study how they use certain techniques in their designs, how they use animations, how they use typography, how they use layouts, so that you can train your creative eye on what makes a
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design great. Also, by replicating and experimenting, you can take your skills even further and refine your techniques in terms of design. Just a disclaimer: for some reason, I still see quite a few designers just 100% copy
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others' works and then claim it as theirs. It's ridiculous, and it's such a quick shortcut to just ruin your reputation and destroy your own career. Instead, what you have to do is to steal like an artist. If you haven't read
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Austin Kleon's book yet, Steal Like an Artist, then I would highly recommend reading it. What he basically mentions in the book is that you need to take multiple inspirational sources and take each bit and piece to combine them
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into your own work, and that's how you make something that is original, not plagiarized. When you're replicating others' work, please be very careful, and if you do decide to post the works that you've done inspired by other people,
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make sure to credit them properly. Another thing about replicating others' work is that you might hit a brick wall because you don't know how to implement a certain functionality or a certain design feature that they have. What you
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need to do at this stage is to not ditch the project and then take more courses thinking that it would help you develop your skills and help you solve that problem. The thing is, it won't. What you need to do instead is to search
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for that specific solution for that specific problem that you're having. If you keep doing this constantly rather than relying on courses, you get past that beginner's learning curve and you will start to develop a really good understanding of how to solve a specific
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problem on your own. When it comes to finding inspiration sources themselves, I would highly recommend you take a look at Awwwards.com, Save It, or for me personally, I like to take a look at graphic design books. Obviously, there
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needs to be a balance between how much you consume inspiration and how much you actually spend time creating, and that's really important. Another thing about building projects is that you want to be very unique with your projects. Please
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avoid building really, really basic websites and landing pages or even calculator apps because that's what other developers and designers also have on their websites. In order to really stand out, you need to build unique projects to showcase on your portfolio.
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The problem with very generic projects is that they only show your technical skills; they don't show how you solve a specific real-life problem or a business problem. Most of the time, when you're freelancing for your clients,
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they're looking for something that could solve their business problems, not to have something that looks nice. If you don't have any clients or any projects that showcase your problem-solving skills, I would highly recommend looking up design brief generators and
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generate a design brief so that you can build your project from it. That way, you can have a project that showcases how you can solve a real-life problem rather than just having something that looks nice and shows off your technical skills.
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Keep in mind that even if you have clients, you still also want to keep building and experimenting with side projects. If you truly love your craft and you're passionate about web design, then that should be a very easy thing
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for you to do. The reason that you want to keep building is not only to improve your skills, but it also gives you a good basis of works and side projects that you can showcase your process and also your work on social
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media, which could help you build your digital presence when you're busy with client work. After you feel like you've built three to four incredible projects, that's when you want to put together your portfolio. Also, please keep your
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portfolio works really consistent to the target audience that you want to attract. If you want to attract e-commerce clients, you want to mostly show e-commerce projects. It's fine to have one or two projects that are not related
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to e-commerce, but the majority of your portfolio should be attracting that specific audience. Once you have built your projects and have a really solid portfolio, the next thing you need to do is to get your first client. One of
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the easiest ways to find your first client...
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freelancing and the goal here is to maximize as much exposure and visibility to your own Services I got my first project by just building a website for my family members business and then there's a second paid project for around
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like $300 where my friend just referred me to the startup that he was interning in and then another source of finding clients is just to search for local businesses around you so just go on Google and search up restaurants near me
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or architectural firms near me and you feel like their websites need a significant Improvement that's when you just reach out to them to do the websites for free and at this point you don't want to get money you just want to
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earn Brandy points gain exposure and gain experience working with a real client after you've landed your first client the most important thing to do is to maintain a healthy relationship with your client and the most important thing to retain that healthy relationship with
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your client is to not make any promises it's always so much better to overd deliver than underd deliver meaning that don't make any promises that you get this done in X days and what happens if you don't get it done then that means
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your trust is immediately gone so don't make any promises just do the thing and overd deliver the project and once you have finished the project the next thing that you want to do is to get a testimonial from the client and a
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testimonal would really help especially when you're starting out because it helps you have some kind of social proof to establish yourself as an expert it gives evidence that you've actually solved a real life problem for a real business owner so probably at this stage
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you've done a few free projects for your clients and have a few decent paying projects the next thing that you need to do to take things even further to land big clients and big projects is to Kickstart your personal brand so aside
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from the obvious things like sharing your works on social media you want to focus on creating video content like long firm content on YouTube or short firm content on Instagram or Tik Tok where possible I personally found video
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content is much more effective in terms of attracting higher value clients and connecting with your audience at a much deeper level compared to just written content or just posting your works with video content it shows the face behind
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the design work that you publish on your social media and also shows your personality as well and I think it's so much more effective in terms of attracting more higher valued clients into your own freelance business because they get to connect with you as a person
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and also get a feel of how you work as a designer and as a side note I really think educational posts that you often see on LinkedIn Instagram or Twitter are really saturated and anyone can post that you can just ask chat gbt to
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generate you very generic tips and tricks about web design and post it on social media and anyone can do that so in order to become very unique and stand out as a web designer I truly think that you need to create video content of
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yourself talking and make content that is personal to you so rather than posting top five design resources or tools like I've done before I've made that mistake is to scrap those kind of content from the get-go and start
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creating content that is more personal so document your journey and share your processes share what you've learned throughout your journey your wins your struggles because those type of content is so much more personal and more unique and it resonates with your audience so
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much better and I think that is the way to truly stand out and attract more clients as a designer a few of my videos and content got the highest engagement and got clients coming to me are the ones that I just share about my own
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journey and share the design process behind a project I've done recently they work because they're very personal and unique and unique to me only and no one else can copy that now if you want to start view content I personally found it
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really difficult to systemize my content creation process and if you're inconsistent with creating and Publishing content then it won't be effective in terms of building your own digital presence and help you landar higher value clients from my personal
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experience what I did to start posting more consistently and landar more projects is to have a Content creation system in place for me I have a notion template that I use to manage script and publish my content I've been using this
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template for almost over a year now and it has personally helped me build my audience here on YouTube to over 25,000 subscribers and over 2,900 on LinkedIn and almost a th000 on Instagram and the most important thing is that it helped
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me land crazy projects I thought I would never land like1 to$ 15,000 projects so I'm happy to announce that I'm making this notion template called the content creation Hub accessible to you guys so that you can start creating content
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build your digital presence and start attracting higher value clients if You' like to get your hands on the template then I have included the link Down Below in the description and since the product has just launched I'm offering you guys
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a 30% discount to the product itself so make sure to use the code launch 24 at checkout so the final thing that I wish I knew early on is to Don't Stop marketing yourself and learn sales skills so early on in my career I
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honestly I wished I spent more time on learning business skills and during that time I just spent a lot of my time learning hard skills so learning the technical skills in terms of learning the latest animation Trends or learning
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the latest web design techniques and skills and the fact is those skills don't help you make a lot of money what helps you make money are business skills before I was in this endless cycle of one month of being very busy and then
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the other month desperately chasing for work so if that sounds like you the thing that you need to do to combat that is to start marketing yourself and don't stop marketing yourself even when you're busy with client works so you would want
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to constantly Market yourself on social media or doing code Outreach and spend at least two or 3 hours per day doing those things getting yourself putting yourself out there and making yourself known to the market to the prospects
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mind and letting them know that your services exist so by doing this you're building a list of potential clients are interested in your services so once you finished working in this current project you already have a list of potential
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clients you have jumped on the sales call with and you from there you can just choose on which projects you want to work on and that's the power of just constantly marketing yourself and putting yourself out there even when
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you're busy and then that would also save you from that hell of constant feast and famine of Desperately chasing for work and the goal here is to be very consistent and play the long game so you want to do
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this all the time and don't stop and then for sales skills there's honestly so many things to talk about but the one thing that I struggled a lot back then and even until now are sales calls and one of the thing that helped me enjoy
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sales calls a little bit more and be better at it is to shift my mindset in terms of what sales calls are supposed to be sales calls are not about negotiating the price or it's not about pitching yourself why you're the best
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option the moment you're negotiating for Price It's the moment that you're not selling anything special you're just selling a commodity and you're undervaluing yourself and the moment you pitch yourself without being asked like sharing your fancy Awards or the years
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of experience you have or sharing why you're the best option for this work is also the moment where you've already lost the client most of the sales calls are just actively listening to the client and truly understanding what
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their problems and what their needs are is it's not necessarily trying to get the job and get quick cash but it's truly connecting with them and really seeing whether if you're a good fit to help them solve the problem it's also
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about asking the right questions to fully understand their business problems and what's their current situation and where they want to be so a really quick sales framework that I've learned around like four to six months ago is that you
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start off the sales call with an introduction you know establishing the tone and the conversation and then afterwards you dive into the problems you try to understand what are their key problems and what is stopping them from where they want to be and how is that
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impacting their business and once you have a really good understanding of their problems that's when you start transitioning to talk about their goals and where they want to be in terms of their business and how achieving that goal would transform their lives and
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their business forever and how you can help them get to that point A to point B and after you have a really good understanding of their business their problems and where they want to be in terms of their business then that's when
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you start to go into the new degree details in terms of the budget sending the proposals and sending follow-up emails so that's just a really quick sales framework but if you want to understand more about the sales process
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and sales calls then I would highly recommend to check out the future or CH though because he has a lot of great videos that talks about sales and that's about everything I have to cover for this video and if you've personally
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found it really helpful and found it enjoyable make sure you drop a like And subscribe see you in the next one
Topics:freelance web designweb design fundamentalslearning web developmentdesign toolscoding for designersbuilding portfolioclient acquisitionweb design inspirationside projectsdesign problem solving
