mattz

Hey designers,

I'm just wondering how you got your skills? Did you go to school for it? or did you just read books and teach yourself?

I'm looking to get some design skills and open a design website.

I bought the following books:

Photoshop for Dummies
Web Design for Dummies
Creating Web Graphics for Dummies
CSS Web Design for Dummies

I'm also taking a bunch of courses at the local college in fall, 16 credits total

Any other suggestions? I want to know how you learned to design.

Deej

your on the right start....learn basics at school... and practice a lot figuring out techniques..

always explore new things... helps already having a sense of art, more for some than others...

show us some work in the future

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mattz

Yeah will do, I think these classes start in fall, so looks like I will be reading all of these books first, maybe I'll know how to design by fall. I already have basic photoshop skills that deal with image editing. Just basic stuff though like messing with color levels to make the picture look better, and more sharp.

Thanks for the feedback

mattz

umm okay, but that didn't address a single thing that my post was about.

mattz

bumping...anymore?

Once I get the design thing down and practice a lot, I'm going to start buying a bunch of PHP books also

For some reason learning as much as possible about websites has really interested me lately.

LilBro

never picked up a book or took a class....

Alexex622

I learned it from online photoshop tutorials. Started on the basics and advanced on higher level. With those books you bought , i think you'll learn a lot... Just put a lot of interest and effort on it. Good luck!

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[ Nate ]

I taught myself most of what I know but my older brother showed me how to get started and was/is my go to guy if I couldn't figure out how to do something. I taught myself by spending countless days in photoshop, frontpage back in the day, and dreamweaver. Trial and error. Good luck to you!!!

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chuvii

that's all about other guys design works - you see and try to make the same, after that you'll ready to make your own peace of spam

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Ace_luffy

talents and hardwork is a key....

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Angelo22

Accademy of fine arts




Then you mess with your computer, read the insane amount of tutorials found lying on the net, and you should just practice and try mixing up what you've learnt.

And burn those 'for dummies' books
they pretty much talk about nothing in general for the 300 appx pages of their books

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tenderobject

you should start reading books. talent now a days seems to go nothing hehehe.. school sucks yoh! but hehe i still prefer doing sculpture and paintings. i learned graphics myself.. and im not good at it. im fine mess with your pc download tutorials etc etc if i were you learn the basic html and css then design is secondary just learn whats new in online designs/graphics and shit.. well, that just me..

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tarupz

online tutorials.. that helps a lot...

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mattz

what are you saying? I want to learn a new skill. It's not a money issue what so ever, it's something I'm interested in and want to do. I make plenty of money with google PPC, more than enough to live well.

mattz

And I never called you a loser? I just said your business ethics suck because you prove a service to webmasters, yet treat them like shit

Please find where I called you a looser.

mattz

I actually found the CSS web deisgn for dummies book very helpful and informative.

mattz

I'm taking online classes
here are all the classes I'm going to take

http://www.morainepark.edu/pages/835.asp

mattz

Any idea where I can find these "online tutorials"

markz08

Good Job dude, you don't have to go to school or something. all it takes is the will to learn... Good Luck... =)

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Jace

there are SOOOOO many sites

http://www.tutorialized.com/ is one good one

another good site is - http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/

also, you can subscribe to a lot of free design magazines if you look hard enough

best thing you can do though, open photoshop or illustrator and just go to town fucking with everything and seeing what everything does

2-3 weeks of that and you will be better than most everyone at ASD

cj_purve

I did 2 years at uni for commercial art, which was generally learning to use the programs that are used for design & the commercial/marketing uses of them. I did my course in 95/96 when the internet was just becoming a commercial tool & computers were taking over. I did 1 year of using a bromide camera, cutting stuff out and sticking it on illustration board to make ads with 4 color separations, then in the second year they said forget all that we're going digital LOL

I learnt more in the last 3 months when I started taking on freelance clients than I did in the entire 2 years.

I have trained a lot of people to use photoshop & dreamweaver, and the first lesson I give them is to pick a random page in a magazine and figure out how to best reproduce it. Draw lines on it with a ruler to plan your 'cuts' and write notes all over it such as 'this is a drop shadow' or 'use gradient overlay' etc. If you don't know how to achieve a certain effect, go to google and ask. ie, creating gradient overlay with drop shadow in photoshop?, and you'll find a tutorial for the *specific* thing you need.

The best advice I can give you for photoshop is don't try to approach it from a book with the intention of knowing it all, only try to learn what you will need to know to produce your ideas & build from there. I've used ps almost every day for 12 years and I know 10% of how it works, probably less!

My second step with training new designers is to give them a few of my psd files - preferably complicated ones, and get them to make banners or promo tools by dragging elements around that already exist.

If you can, get ahold of some psd files from friends, or email me and I'll send you one, and set yourself a few projects from that.

Good luck & make sure you post some work!
I love seeing new designers make break throughs!

tarupz

try this one.. i've learned a lot from them.. http://good-tutorials.com/

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chadimus

I taught myself. If you want get good spend many 1000's of hours experimenting. Or you could buy a book ;)

slurpee

go to google.com and type this words "adobe photosop tutorials" and you will be flooded with helpfull tutorials scattered on the internet. same with css, html, or whatever. start with the basics.

then go to your backyards and burn those "for dummies" books and eventually you will tell your yourself "why would i read this books? im not a dummy..." lol

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