I have been a Hardware engineer for 5+ yrs now and I am trying to switch over to a design position (mostly in web design). Over the last months I have learned about Flash and learned basic typographic principles and color principles off lessons on lynda.com.
I met with a manager on a design group and he looked over my first piece (a site I’ve been working on for my wife’s cousin).
http://stickeredvan.com/clients/MMP
He was impressed with (1) my pro-activeness in pursuing a new career and (2) with what I had accomplished so far based on only 9 months of learning and with no formal education in it. However he did say I needed a ways to go.
He recommended me learnign Photoshop, CSS, and HTML. He also recommended going back to take a class here and there at my local community college (like design layout etc). He also said to get my portfolio to be btwn 5-6 GOOD pieces (half being interactive like for websites and hafl being static pieces like logos, icons, layout examples, etc).
My question is besides hitting up college for a class here or there is there any good publications (magazines, books,etc) or websites I can go to to also learn design principles. Also anyplace where I can learn how to use Photoshop to make icons (he mentioned they use it alot for that).
Thanks again guys!