Question for graphic designers
 

how did you learn to do designs ?
did you take any design courses or learned everything yourself ?
how hard is it do learn to do decent designs ?

I learned everything by myself... playing around with different programs, reading tutorials etc.

learned it all myself. well photoshop and all that i did. i went to the art institute of seattle when i was 16 for graphic design, so i had some kind of a graphics pre-training :)

I had some formal training for design etc. It was a waste of money. I already knew everything they had to teach me, basically all they did was give us a book and make us do tutorials from it. Something I could have did at home.

Ah well, now I have a peice of paper that says I have training (with honours :thumbsup )

I think with graphics, you either have the magic touch or you don't.

I love graphic design since it enables you to express so much creativity that others will see and enjoy. My drawings as a kid were very intense so I started young. My son's the same way. He draws all the time.

I did my first logo for a company when I was about 13. A friend of my fathers was a big dress manufacturer in LA and he was stuck trying to come up with a name and logo for a new line he was making. My father knew I liked to draw so he said why don't you see what you can come up with, you never know. I went to work like crazy, so excited for the chance, and came up with one, sent it to my dad's friend and he flipped out for it and sent me a check for $1000. Which back in the late '60's was a shit load of $ for a 13 year old. The coolest thing wasn't the money, it was going to department stores and seeing my design hanging on the dress tags in the racks. It was just an awesome feeling.

When I got into porn, and phone sex, all the design work we needed was right up my alley, cause we got to the point where we had ads on every couple pages in Hustler and I designed them all myself. So that was fun too.

I'm not professional but I learned all I know from playing with the softwares, just making goofy designs and stuff to learn how to use the tools.

There also are many on-line tutorials for certain special effects you might want to create, they can be good to check out... learn to use all tools etc.

Good luck ;)

:rasta

I went to school for my fine arts degree - and while it had little to do with computers, it taught me much about fundamental design techniques. Then with so many tutorials on the net that i picked up the rest there.

I've learned all myself.. although I'm currently having some courses about designing in school. But sofar I haven't learned anything new @ school.

Don't they Teach you Design at Cheatski ?

Best way to learn anything is by doing, but sure can be expensive that way though.

I think i'm going to take some design classes. I need atleast some basic skills to make galleries/freesites/logos.

would you know where I can get a good deal for adult magazine ads? I use to use a company paycall advertising but they are gone

Hey Escort,

The adult media buying co. we used went out of business when the Net starting ruining the adult mag's circulations. They were having a hard time finding enough clients who wanted to continue buying print at the ridiculous prices the mags were still trying to get despite reduced audiences. We were their biggest client so when we cut way back on print ads I guess they saw the end was near and closed up shop.

there is a company in cali called creative ill have to find out if they are still open

I did our tutorials :glugglug

http://www.bluedesignstudios.com/tutorials.php

There's a typo.
Optimise should be optimize.
But don't take my word for it, I don't speak english.

thats not a typo, the "ize" is american. "ise" is english australian.

Oh. Sorry.

Started with doodles in 2nd grade, many scratches later computers came along and at one point I decided to go to college and took every computer graphics course available. They were all with the same prof who wasn't exactly a wizard himself but I had a nice University computer lab budget pretty much at my disposal for a couple years and continued working for the university for a while for spare change $4.75/hour. This happened in 96 when DOTCOM exploded so naturally I gravitated to much higher paying jobs like a gig at Motorola.

If you've got an eye for graphic art you will pick things along the way, of course being computer savvy helps too as well as curiosity. My main education was self taught because I was curious and it's still that way. Except natural curiosity was replaced by practical need to solve client design needs.

i tought myself, mainly from trial and error

I had a T-Shirt company back in the mid-90's...learned to make logos and stuff with CorelDraw. Got into the 'net very soon after that and web design, in particular, around '98.

Never took a course...learned as I went. Just like any software, click it and see what it does :winkwink:

How do you learn good design? Poke around and study what works (converts). Then mold what you see in your head with what works.

I learned the stuff I know just from trial and error. Im not as good as most of these guys here, but I'd like to consider myself more than amateur. Its alot of fun and thats really the best thing, have fun with it, if you constantly compare yourself with the work of others you will get discouraged, my advice is first and foremost do it for your own satisfaction, have fun with it, and dont listen to people who put your work down,. There is a difference between constructive criticism and just some asshole trying to be hurtful.