2 comments
The Beginning
Towards the end of my college year, I started gaining interests in web works. Then I asked myself, "Where do I begin?" At this day and age, anything can be found on the net, it's just a matter you finding what you want. My supervisor at UCSD library(at the time) adviced me to start with the very fundamental. CSS and then design.
I've great respect for csszengarden.com and w3schools.com. I've spent many many weeks to analyse and disect every line of CSS and XHTML code. it was really difficult to grasp the concept of tableless layout, but it was really worth every second spent.
Then, I started working and hanging out with friends with same passions for design, and before I knew it, i started absorbing tricks of the trade, little by little from these mentors. There's a saying, "the more you know, the more you don't know", that is absolutely true.
Design is very organic, it is all about finding your own style and making it work. There are tons and tons of css galleries out there for you to peek what others have done. Who knows, you might be inspired with others' works.
Inspiration and ripping off are like water and oil. Never mixed. Never ever ever steal anybody's design!!!! Only very low and pathetic self-proclaimed designer would do such thing. Beside, ripping others' site would burn yourself.
Thanx Eddie,
Tools i used for this site are photoshop, CMSMS, TextEdit, PHP and MySQL.
I never attended any conferences, pretty much learned to design on my own. I did learn how to use photoshop or dreamweaver at work. Most of the time, classes are designed to teach you technical skills.
I do check out what's out there in the gallery from time to time. And my site is featured on designshack.co.uk. :)
Nice site and great thoughts about design. Perhaps including some of the tools you use might be helpful to your readers as well. Illustrator? Photoshop? ColorMunki?
Do you attend any conferences or go to any classes? What sites do you recommend for inspiration? Ever try designshack.co.uk or cssbloom? or cssbeauty? Well, best of luck to you in your design endeavors!