To retrain as a web designer?

[fluffandnonsense]

I'm a qualified Graphic Designer and I ran my own business for 6 years until I had my daughter and had to close the company. Since then I have worked exclusively for a single client doing 2 days a week design work. It's worked well for me and meant I could earn a wage but without a huge impact on my children. The time is now coming where I think I would like to return to full time employment only the landscape of design has changed so much. It seems the role of a traditional Graphic Designer has now become obsolete! Nearly
every job I see requires some sort of CSS web design experience. I have designed sites but never built them. I think in order to get a decent job I'm going to have to retrain in web design but I haven't a clue where to start! There are millions of courses and as I have no experience I have no idea how to weed out the good ones from the bad?

Plus it will mean not earning any cash for a year or so while I train! Has anyone retrained in this area? Any tips on where to start? Is it worth the investment?

Why do you think it'll mean not earning anything for a year? Can't you start by studying some of the free courses out there, while continuing to work with your existing client & looking out for opportunities to gradually pick up more & more of the techie side as your skills increase?

I did an HND in multimedia about ten years ago. About two years after finishing it was already dated. Why don't you look at Wordpress and try tinkering with that as an easy way to get a grip with CSS?

You dont need to take a year out. CSS isn't that difficult to get the basics of to start at least, theres lots of good online tutorials. this website www.w3schools.com/css/ is a good one to start with

No you don't need to take a year out. I started by doing a few free online courses, then took a couple of classes at my local college to learn the more complex stuff.

As mentioned above W3Schools are very good, and tinkering with WordPress too - there are TONS of free tutorials that teach WP skills!

I think you're right that you need to retrain, everyone I know who still does print is saying that there is just no work around. I've worked with some graphic designers who don't know CSS/HTML but they are always very limited in what they can achieve/earn and tend to produce designs that are very hard for a developer to work with. The other issue is that only very large organisations have designers specialise to the extent that they can get away with it.
In terms of training Treehouse is where it's at. It's bang up to date and really accessible. I've pointed several people at it and they've had great results pretty quickly. Employers are reasonably likely to have heard of it which is a bonus.
You have to pay for it but it's pretty cheap and much better that anything you'll get for free.
teamtreehouse.com/library/websites
If you're reasonably smart and tech savvy - if you can use inDesign and Photoshop you must be reasonably on the case - then you won't need a year to do this. Work through some courses/case studies on tree house, do some voluntary work for charities/friends and family then you've got a portfolio you can put on the web and use to bid for work.

Like HoveDad said, you might not need to take time out if you want to brush up on CSS and HTML. If you're using Adobe software you can easily get your head around Dreamweaver. Flash is very useful too. WP, Drupal and CMS are also good to learn.

Brilliant thank you! I think the role of a traditional designer is dying fast, if I don't retrain soon then everything I worked so hard for at uni will have been a total waste. You've given me the confidence that I'm doing the right thing, thanks everyone :)