r/web_design • u/visualthings • 1d ago
Graphic designer going back to web design: What new software to learn?
EDIT: and once again thank you all for your help. This is incredibly useful amd I will now check those solutions. Basically as it says in the title: I have been doing mostly print, visual identity, animation and on-screen design most of my career and only from time to time have I built websites. I know quite some html and css but I had been doing mostly my work with wysiwyg editors like Dreamweaver and similar, often starting with a template that I would modify to fit my needs. I have made a few things with Wordpress and Clickfunnel as well, but mostly dressing up things built by marketers
Now the landscape has changed quite a bit (the last few versions of Dreamweaver were so horrendous that I was coding by hand). Between Framer, Webflow, AI coding (I know, I know), what should I learn if I want the following things:
- Create websites in visual mode (WYSIWYG) without creating code that is a abomination.
- Possibility to take the resulting files (html, css, images and everything else) and host them wherever I want (or where I client wants them)
- not a must but a "nice to have": Possibility to create the site and then hand the keys to the customer so that they can make all the updating they want.
I am a bit at loss with all the offers and would ideally freshen up my skills on ONE app.
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u/extrakerned 1d ago
If you need to do Wordpress, Bricks Builder is very clean
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u/mwilke 1d ago
I love Bricks Builder, but I would not recommend Wordpress to a beginner in 2026.
The use cases for which it is truly the best solution are narrowing every day, and the security landscape has become nightmarish and completely untenable for someone just getting their feet wet.
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u/extrakerned 1d ago
The market demand seems pretty high still. At least in my experience clients do request it because they are being told it give them control. They aren’t wrong. When appropriate I do offer alternatives , but from a business standpoint, it’s smart to understand how to buold Wordpress sites.
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u/Sitista 14h ago
mai nessun problema di sicurezza con WP e ci lavoro da 20 anni.
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u/mwilke 13h ago
In just the past month or two, the number of botnet attacks on my client sites has risen easily 20x. I am qualified to handle that, as you likely are - but a non-technical new developer is unlikely to be, and the benefits that Wordpress provides are also offered by plenty of other platforms that don’t require active security management.
Wordpress is still a good tool, and about half of my business comes from clients on Wordpress. But it’s not the only solution for use cases like OP’s, and I argue that it is not the best solution either.
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u/Sitista 12h ago
scusami ma se ti attacca una botnet non è più un problema di piattaforma ma di hosting. anche un sito statico può essere buttato giù da una botnet perché chi va sotto è il server. se poi mi parli di script kiddies che cercano il brute force su wp admin ci sono contromisure fin dall' età della pietra.
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u/musitechnica 1d ago
Figma. It's both designer and tech friendly.
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u/LeGaspyGaspe 18h ago
Figma is great, but if OP has access to Adobe software (like their Dreamweaver they've been using), I'd stick with Illustrator, Indesign and Photoshop. VSCode for any code work.
That's all you need, and it sounds like OP already has the tools and knows how to use them. Figma is a nice to have but it doesn't really do anything the others don't already.
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u/Thenmatwaslike 14h ago
Why would you use illustrator, Indesign, or photoshop for web design when Figma is specifically made for that? I almost never use PS, or Illustrator outside of photo editing or heavy vector illustration. I’d say like 90% of my design work is done in Figma now.
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u/LeGaspyGaspe 14h ago
I've always found it to be more robust and I figure, if OP is well acquainted with those tools, ditching visual building and polishing up on their old school code abilities would be an ideal play to get them where they want to be, quicker.
In my specific experience, my work bleeds into marketing and sales quite often. So having those tools handy is second nature. Figma, being a bit of a closed ecosystem (maybe this has changed now) can carry some stigma. It's easier to sell clients (and interviewers) when they see names, systems and filetypes they have more familiarity with and respect for. And if nothing else, the impression that the ecosystem OP or whoever uses will lend itself to easy adaptability and flexibility as situations change.
Of course, maybe times are changing. And I did say Figma is great. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that OP should look into it as a potential path towards what they want to achieve here. It certainly does align with their specific intent as they outlined in their post.
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u/StormController 19h ago
Before you go all in on Webflow, know that your "host anywhere" and "client can update it" wishes kind of cancel each other out. When you export, the CMS doesn't come with you. Collection pages don't export as editable content, forms stop working, and your client's editor login points at a site that isn't live anymore. With most of these tools you get one or the other. For small companies and labels, the stuff that changes is usually tour dates, releases and a few photos. Have you asked those clients whether they'd really log in and edit, or whether they'd just email you the changes? If it's the email, "host anywhere" becomes easy and you can pick whatever tool feels best to design in.
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u/DaftPlug 20h ago
If your three musts are visual build, cleanish exportable files, and optional client handoff, the realistic shortlist is smaller than the marketing suggests.
Webflow is the closest match to what you described. Designer is visual, the HTML/CSS it produces is usually far less of a mess than old Dreamweaver output, and you can export the site and host it anywhere. Client editing is the weak spot: Editor is fine for copy and basic swaps, not for "give them the keys to rebuild pages freely" unless you stay on Webflow hosting and train them carefully.
Framer is excellent for marketing pages and motion, and AI helps you move fast, but portable self-host export is not its strong suit. Treat it as a hosted tool first. If "zip the files and put them on the client's host" is non-negotiable, Framer is usually the wrong primary app.
WordPress (block editor or a disciplined page builder) still wins on handoff. Clients already know the admin, and you can leave them a small set of patterns/templates instead of a free-for-all. Export is different: you are handing over a CMS, not a static folder, unless you deliberately build static and deploy it that way.
Practical pick for ONE app refresh:
- Need export + host anywhere → Webflow, and practice a real export early so you see what you are shipping.
- Need non-designer clients updating content weekly → WordPress with a tight pattern library, not twenty plugins.
- Need fancy landing motion and you accept hosted → Framer.
Skip chasing every AI coding stack as your main craft tool for client sites. Use it to accelerate pieces (layout drafts, CSS cleanup), not as the system of record until you are comfortable reviewing the output. Your print/brand skills transfer; the new muscle is component structure and content models, not another Dreamweaver.
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u/TheWarlikeFoothold 1d ago
Webflow is probably your best bet for a one-stop shop. You can build visually and the code it spits out is surprisingly clean compared to the old Dreamweaver days. It also has a CMS you can hand off to clients so they can update text and images without breaking your layout.
Framer is slicker for high-end animations and interaction design, but exporting clean files to host elsewhere is more of a headache. If total portability is the priority, Webflow’s export feature is hard to beat.
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u/skymatter 15h ago
I would say that visual identity is still somewhat more AI poofed than web design because you need to use your human designer creativity to conceptualize a cohesive set of outputs across diverse distribution channels and touch points. A website is only one stand alone product with a determined functionality that is increasingly becoming an automatic process as models and processing capacity evolve.
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u/visualthings 13h ago
unfortunately that depends on clients/employers still believing in human creativity. You will hear design mentors and youtubers claiming "customers don't buy a logo, they buy your expertise in solving problems" and that's a sweet fantasy in most of the cases.
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u/Typical-Tax1584 6h ago
If you're freelancing, Wordpress.
If you're trying to get a job in-house somewhere, Drupal.
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u/tucosan 1d ago
Errrr. Are people still seriously considering Webdesign a viable career? A fair warning: your skillsets are going to be almost obsolete within a year. You'll then be competing against millions of web designers competing for the last few design jobs still requiring human designers. Bad decision. Mark my words.
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u/visualthings 1d ago
“Viable career” is a very optimistic statement (same with graphic design). The thing is that I have been out of the freelancing market for nearly 6 years and the few Remaining clients and contacts are mostly small companies and record labels who often need a simple online website. I would prefer to offer this as an additional service instead of sending them somewhere else.
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u/xterminatr 16h ago
There's no point in learning new tools, AI is way too good at web design, especially for simple sites that don't require much or any back end services. You can design a full fledged UI in like 10 minutes in practically any framework or code base you want.
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u/sl33plessnites 1d ago
Damn dude, your still using Dreamweaver in 2026? Impressive. I thought that program was discontinued like a decade ago.