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telekinetic · 05-27-2009, 07:35 AM

What did you go to school for? If your goal is to be a professional web designer, you might want to go back. My wife has a graphic design degree with a web design emphasis, and the stuff she learned had nothing to do with how to use dreamweaver.

I am not saying this applies to you, because there are exceptions to every rule, but the fact that everyone thinks they can be a web designer because they can use Front Page or Dream Weaver and know how to format a head tag always rubs me the wrong way. I am not trying to say that learning HTML/PHP/CSS/Flash/??? is difficult--the mechanics of programming a website are almost trivial (even I can do all of that, and I am just a mechanical engineer good at using google).

The ability to make intelligent color, layout, style, navigation, and gui decisions is not something I feel you can learn from a tutorial. Most of her web design experience was done in photoshop and illustrator...assuming that once you had the mockup/prototype done, it was just 'plug and chug' to get it all to work.

The best analogy I can say is that learning to use a paintbrush is easy, making beautiful paintings is something else all together--taking some graphics design classes will be just as useful to you (if not 10x more) as learning the code.

05-27-2009, 07:35 AM	#4 (permalink)
telekinetic zomgomgomgomgomgomg Location: Fauxenix, Azerona	What did you go to school for? If your goal is to be a professional web designer, you might want to go back. My wife has a graphic design degree with a web design emphasis, and the stuff she learned had nothing to do with how to use dreamweaver. I am not saying this applies to you, because there are exceptions to every rule, but the fact that everyone thinks they can be a web designer because they can use Front Page or Dream Weaver and know how to format a head tag always rubs me the wrong way. I am not trying to say that learning HTML/PHP/CSS/Flash/??? is difficult--the mechanics of programming a website are almost trivial (even I can do all of that, and I am just a mechanical engineer good at using google). The ability to make intelligent color, layout, style, navigation, and gui decisions is not something I feel you can learn from a tutorial. Most of her web design experience was done in photoshop and illustrator...assuming that once you had the mockup/prototype done, it was just 'plug and chug' to get it all to work. The best analogy I can say is that learning to use a paintbrush is easy, making beautiful paintings is something else all together--taking some graphics design classes will be just as useful to you (if not 10x more) as learning the code. __________________ twisted no more Last edited by telekinetic; 05-27-2009 at 07:42 AM..