Recommendations for aspiring Web Designer

I have a real interest in web design. I self taught HTML to myself, and recently learned the macromedia products last year, which I love. I’m still learning, but I absolutely love designing sites! I start college in the fall. Is there any suggestions anyone would recommend to me to help me reach my goal? …as far as what to learn and such? I’ve toured a lot of flash sites people have posted here, and they’re awesome! They’re are so many talented people on this board. It’s amazing! If you have any suggestions, I’d greatly appreciate it. thanks

maria-

practice a LOT!

Yup, that about covers it. :thumb:

Practice and learn as much as you can, well, without it getting in the way of your studies of course.

Edit: You’re already off to a good start - Kirupaforums.com

a girl!! :beam:

:love:

Yeah, I’ve been practicing a lot. I wish I would have known about macromedia a long time ago! I’ve been buying books this summer to learn a lot more. I’ve taken a full year of web design. In the fall I’m taking Digital imaging and a basic design course. There are only a few computer courses that transfer over to my next college. There’s so many things I want to learn, but it seems like I have so little time to learn it! lol

maria-

Believe me, I also wished I had discovered Flash sooner than I did.

I used to feel the same, so much to learn, but no time! I recommend u to learn one thing at a time, and learn it good, then pass to another thing :slight_smile:

yeah, it seems to work best doing one thing at a time. Sometimes I’m tempted to skip the beginning of a book and just go to the end where all the cool advance stuff is. Then I stop myself and say…you’ve gotta know the basics to get the advanced. lol.

I made my first flash site for a comic book store as a school project in the early spring. He loves the site, but hasn’t been able to put it on the web yet. I have the site on a file. Is there a way, I could post it and see what you all think of it, or do I have to put it on the web?

this is a little off-subject. But all the sites I’ve seen so far have really cool sound effects when you mouse-over something or when it transitions. I was wondering, where do you get them from? lol. dumb question probably.

maria-

It’s not a dumb question, if you do a search (Google) for sound bytes you’ll get plenty of hits.

And as far as posting the site, you could upload it to a free web hosting service (freewebs.com) and post that in the Showcase & Critiques section of the forums.

I make my own sounds with a keyboard.

works well

with google it is hard to find a “custom” sounds
I think there are programs like sound forge also to make sounds

yea, sound forge is a good option, I have it but dont know how to use it

Looking forward to see ur site flashback (that reminded me a snes game)

:slight_smile:

Sound Forge is good.

If you wanted to make music out of those sounds, or even if you didn’t make your own sounds, FL Studio is good.

nononono flashkit is the best for free website soundFX. all categorised :smiley:

Hmmm, I don’t know about that…

> Dont ever forget the basics.
> Keep Learning.
> Dont cheat but create.
> Never Give Up.
> Always keep Your Feet on Ground.
> Be Active in D & D Forum.
> Better if u experiment and learn stuff online, rather then being a book worm.

I also taught myself html, dhtml, flash, Dw, Swift 3d, Adobe, Learning & Experimenting at maya and 3d max rightnow…all by myself…so

> DONT STOP

:slight_smile:

How I come up with a design is to decide on images I’d like to use. Thinking about the clients and the style of site I’m trying to acheive I’ll come up with the images I’d like to use and then from the images a colour scheme. If you’ve got 3 out of 5 images with a blue tone then a green site does kind of seem odd.

I’d also recommend looking at other sites, writing down what you liked about the site and what you didn’t. Once you’ve looked at a few add notes about what youn think would improve their designs and from there you’ll begin to have your own ideas.

And you said you’d learned the Macromedia projects, I’d recommend learning Adobe Photoshop. I highly recommend it :thumb:

edit: Also I recommend books, I’ve got one of Hillman Curtis’s and I can’t recommend it enough.

I start college next week, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to finish my fan site before then. Sorry it took so long to respond on this thread. I’ve been working a LOT! I suppose I could post my current layout of my site. It’s strictly html that I fiddled around with over the years.

I made my introduction with flash and my index page recently. I didn’t link any buttons because I didn’t finish the site. But if you type /index3.html after /jessicaandrewsdirect/ (deleting everything after that) you will come to my old layout with the html. I made the graphic at the top with paintshop pro. I’m taking a photoshop class this fall, which I look forward to.

My old layout is simple because I don’t know all the advanced scripting and things that flash could do or something. I like my forms under ‘the fans’ links. That’s one problem I’m having now with flash…I can’t get the forms to send to my e-mail address. Let me know what you all think of my old layout. As soon as my new layout with flash is done, I’ll be sure to put it up.

I wish I had more time to experiment with flash and its cool entries, motion tweens, and sounds…but now summer is practically over, and school starts! I didn’t even finish the flash book I was working on. I appreciate everyone’s suggestions and I hope to slowly improve as I learn more. Thanks again.