The results of the web design survey con­ducted by A List Apart in April have finally been released. A stag­ger­ing 33,000 people responded to the survey and the final report tops out at 81 pages.

Over­all the report is quite inter­est­ing. It seems to con­firm a lot of sus­pi­cions about the indus­try as a whole. The indus­try is in fact male-​dominated; only 16% of the respon­dents said they were female. Almost every­body in the indus­try has a blog, but not nec­es­sar­ily any promi­nence for it. There are a lot of self-​employed people, with vary­ing salaries and levels of job satisfaction/unsatisfaction.

I’m quite impressed by the results of the report. There are some inter­est­ing ques­tions posed by the data and also clear areas where a more focused approach is needed. Obvi­ously, the method of data col­lec­tion (vol­un­tary web survey) has some seri­ous draw­backs, but I think the data does lead to some broad con­clu­sions of the indus­try and is a good start­ing point for more research.

On a side note, the design of the report looks pos­i­tively snappy! The graphs and charts all look great, as does the type. I’d love to know how all those graphs were made so pretty.

Update: Eric Meyer has writ­ten in-​depth about the process of col­lect­ing the data and cre­at­ing the report. Def­i­nitely read this post after taking a look at the report. I’ve also expe­ri­enced those Excel pains Meyer speaks of as well. Short answer for how the charts were cre­ated: Excel (for mac) → Num­bers → PDF → InDe­sign. Yikes.