So I got my first job recently as junior web-developer. My company creates small

Question

So I got my first job recently as junior web-developer.
My company creates small/medium sites for wide variety of customers: autobusiness companies, weddign agencies, some sauna websites, etcetc, hope you get my point. They don't do big serious stuff like bank systems or really big systems, it's mostly small/medium-sized websites for startups/medium sized business. My main skills are PHP/MySQL, I also know HTML and a bit of CSS/JS/AJAX. I know that good web-developer must know some backend language (like PHP/Ruby/Python) AND HTML+CSS+JS+AJAX+JQuery combo.
However, I was always wondering. In my company we have web-designer. In other serious organisations I often see the same stuff: web-developers who create business-logic and web-designers, who create design. As far as I know, after designers paint design of website they give it to developers either in PSD or sliced way, and developers put it together with logic, but design is NOT created by developers. Such separation seems very good for full-time job, but I am concerned with question how do freelance web-developers do websites? Do most of them just pay freelance designers to create design for them? Or do some people do both?
Reason why I ask - I plan to start some freelancing in my free time after I get good at web-development. But I don't want to create websites with great business-logic but poor design. Neither I want to let someone else create a design for me. I like web-development very much and I am doing quite good, I like design aswell, even though I am a bit lost how to study it and get better at it. But I am scared that going in both directions won't let me become expert, it seems like two totally different jobs and getting really good in both seems very hard. But I really want to do both. What should I do? Thank you!

Explanation / Answer

I started back in the late 90s and have done a bunch of "Lone Gunman" projects right up to last year. When it came to design, I just did the best I could. As time went by I got better and better at it. I've had many compliments regarding the sites I've built from scratch, design and development. It didn't come easy, but eventually you get a sense of what is needed for a particular project. Also, expect to be crushed from time to time. :(

Either you have a "design bone" or you don't. You'll soon find out which.

If you have some skill, it's easy to get inspiration from other great looking sites. Look at the way they use (but not overuse) color. Try to stay within your abilities. Learn how to use fonts, and which fonts work together and which don't.

Overall, consistency is king. Horrible sites are usually horrible because they are a mish-mash of too many conflicting ideas.

However, if you try and fail... then it's time to hire a good designer.

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