Mention the job title of "web designer" and the first image that pops into many people's minds is of an unshaven "techie" wearing sloppy clothes, sitting in front of a computer.
WEB DESIGNER Jeremy Steck appreciates the opportunity to live in Leelanau County.
Jeremy Steck laughs when he hears that.
“Oh, yeah, that is probably the image most people have,” he said. Steck has lived just about all his life in Leelanau County, growing up in Suttons Bay. Now he is literally “living the dream” of many former county residents who moved away for employment reasons: working a high-tech job in Leelanau County.
Steck and his wife, Mary (Peplinski), reside near Cedar while raising three children, with a fourth on the way. He has worked many different jobs in his 35 years, but found his calling in 1999 when he went to work for Leelanau Communications, Inc. as a web designer.
After graduating from Suttons Bay High School in 1990, Steck attended Northwestern Michigan College where he took classes towards a degree in education, but never graduated. “I was never a great college student,” he admits.
But Steck was handy with computers. He took every computer course he could during high school.
“I really liked computers. I found them fascinating, but never really thought of doing anything with them,” he said.
In 1999, Steck was talking with his brother-in-law, Mike Grosvenor, about different jobs. Grosvenor mentioned that Andy McFarlane was looking for someone to help in his new business. “Mike said Andy was looking for someone who knew something about computers,” Steck said.
McFarlane had started up his company and was looking for people who could be trained. “When I hired Jeremy, he had some skills with the computer, but really didn’t know a lot about the Internet business. He was perfect for what I needed and he is by far and away my best employee,” McFarlane said.
So what does a web designer do? It’s not magic, as the uninitiated may believe, but is based on a computer language known as Hyper Text Markup Language, or HTML. “HTML is the basic language all web designers work in. We also use PHP, which is another programming language,” Steck said.
Using these programming languages, Steck and McFarlane build websites for their clients. Steck said a website can be simple with a photo of a business, the business’ name and contact information. Or it can be complex with moving pictures and links to other websites.
How did Steck learn how to do all this? “Andy gave the name of a website, webmonkey.com, and I took a bunch of on-line tutorials,” he said. McFarlane gave him a couple of basic websites to set up, and he has been learning more ever since.
“It was a little bit of a leap for me. I had been on the Internet, but hadn’t set up a website or anything like that,” Steck said.
While there are programs out there that will literally build a site for you, Steck said at Leelanau Communications still does things “old school.”
“We still hand code, type in the code, everything. It keeps the code clean so our pages load faster,” he said.
<html><head><meta http-equiv=” “content-type” content=“text/html;” is an example of a line of code a web designer might type in. A simple web page may have 20 different groups of coding, where a more complex page may have hundreds.
“When you start to make things move, like say if you want a button on a page to change color to indicate you have clicked on it, that is when the code starts getting complicated,” he said. A simple page can be set up in minutes, while a complex page with moving images and different links can take from two to four weeks.
Many business owners want a presence on the Internet. “Most business owners are pretty savvy on using the web, but they don’t always know what they want to do,” Steck said. He sits down and talks with clients to see what they want.
Much of his work comes in the form of customer support. McFarlane said Steck is a great employee and asset at Leelanau.com.
“A lot of people who work with Jeremy tell me how lucky I am to have him. I know and he is just a great guy to have around,” he said.
Steck said he, too, appreciates the leap McFarlane made in hiring him. “Andy is a great boss and he gave me a great opportunity here,” he said.
As to what it takes to succeed as a web designer, Steck said it all starts with a good work ethic. “Typing is a factor and you have to have a knowledge of computers,” he said. While he has succeeded without a college degree, there are times he wishes he had a degree in web design.
“It isn’t necessary, which attracts a lot of people to this, but sometimes it would be nice to have a degree when I’m stuck on something,” Steck said.
Finding year-round, reliable work is a challenge for many county residents.
“I feel very blessed to be able to live and work here and not be in a big city. I grew up here. I’ve lived in Lake Leelanau and I’m now in Cedar. I plan on doing this as long as I can,” Steck said.
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