When you think of the perfect freelance web designer, what qualities do you envision? A natural eye for color combinations and typography? An eye for user experience and interface design? The ability to create responsive websites that look great on mobile devices? If you’re looking to hire a freelance web designer, it’s important to know whether your prospective employee has these skills in-house already or if they need to be acquired. There are plenty of people out there who can give your company an attractive website at the right price point, but not everyone is skilled enough to make sure that their work looks good (and works well) on every device users might access it from a smartphone screen to a laptop monitor.
Strong Understanding of UX and UI Design
The difference between UX and UI design is that the former focuses on how users interact with a site, whereas the latter considers how it looks. In other words, UX designers are concerned with things like navigation and usability, while UI designers pay attention to graphics and colors. While you can certainly be skilled at both types of work (and many freelancers are), there are pros and cons to specializing in either field: if your main focus is user experience, then having an eye for aesthetics may not be as important, but if your focus is visual design or just knowing how sites should function you’ll need all the help from others that you can get!
Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
If you’re a web designer, you’ve likely heard of HTML. This is the language used to create basic web pages. It’s also the foundation for CSS and JavaScript, as well as other programming languages like Python and Ruby. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a style sheet language used to format and style HTML documents by defining how elements look on screen. For example: if a tag has a font size of 24px and color of #FF0000 (red), then all instances of this element will appear with those properties no matter where they are placed within your document or how many times they appear. JavaScript is another type of programming language that gives users more control over their websites by allowing them to interact with them in new ways for example, by adding animations or dropdown menus without reloading pages every time there’s an update required!
Choose Eye for Color Combinations
If you’re a freelance web designer, you must have an eye for color combinations. This is because colors are the first thing that people notice when they visit your wesbsite and can make or break its usability. To choose colors that work well together, one should understand how different colors affect users’ emotions and moods. For example, Red boosts energy levels, so it’s best used as an accent color in an otherwise neutral design. It also increases appetite (which explains why restaurants use red lights above their counters). Green creates feelings of peace and tranquility while blue makes people feel relaxed but alert at the same time perfect if your client needs help relaxing!
Ability to Choose the Right Fonts for the Job
Choose fonts that are well-known and easy to read. The font you choose should be familiar to your audience, so they don’t have to spend time figuring out how it works. This will allow them to focus on the message you’re trying to convey instead of struggling through your design. Choose appropriate fonts for your audience’s needs and preferences. When selecting a font, consider who will be viewing it: if they’re older or younger than average, if they have any visual impairments or special needs (like color blindness), etc., since these factors may affect their ability or desire to read certain types of text in certain types of fonts with ease (e.g., sans serif vs serif). Also, pay attention not just to what kind of content will appear but also where on the page it’ll live; for example, headlines tend toward larger sizes than body copy because they convey more important information than paragraphs do!
Ability to Create Responsive Designs
Responsive design is an approach to web design that allows a website to adapt its layout to the size of the screen or device it is being viewed on. This means that if you are viewing a site on your phone, it will look and function differently than if you were viewing it on your laptop or desktop computer. Responsive design is important because it’s becoming more and more common for users to access websites from their mobile devices, so having this functionality allows them to do so without having to zoom in or scroll horizontally (which can be difficult).
Need to be able to design good-looking sites
Mobile-responsive design is a must for any freelance web designer. It’s not just about making everything look good on a small screen; it’s about optimizing the user experience for mobile users. If you want to be successful as a freelancer, you need to be able to design sites that work well across all devices and browsers. A site that looks good on a desktop but breaks down when viewed on mobile will not get many clients or projects from me because I know what kind of frustrations my clients have with their websites when they visit them from their phones or tablets. I’ve seen too many instances where people have paid thousands upon thousands of dollars for custom designs only to find out later that they aren’t compatible with mobile devices!
Conclusion
There’s no question that the web designer is a vital part of any design team, and if you want to be a successful freelancer, it’s important to have the right skills. This list is just a starting point; there are many others as well! But with these 10 skills in hand, we think you’re well on your way toward becoming an expert in designing websites for clients who need them built quickly and efficiently.