making no progress in graphic design, help me.

I had learn web design for 2 years .
I am good at coding xhtml/css .
However my weakness and disadvantage is graphic design !
(I mean design the graphic of the website)

More details, I am poor in fireworks and photoshop .
(Actually I heard of fireworks support vector image and fireworks works better with dreamweaver. I prefer fireworks.)
I had tried to find web graphic design tutorial on internet but give up later .
The tutorial are all the same .
They teach you how to make and process a picture .
None of the tutorial teach you how to do the "web graphic design" from scratch .
They give you fish rather than how to fish .
I feel disappointed on the tutorial .

I know there must be many web graphic design gurus in dp forum .
If you have any suggestion how I can improve my graphic design , I appreciate your feedback ,advices and suggestion .
Thanks .
Any good tutorial really teach me how to do graphic design ?

 

I understand your problem.

This link may help you "http://www.open-of-course.org/courses/mod/resource/view.php?id=471"

Thanks!

 

- Leonardo da Vinci

'Design' is an art, you can learn but to master it you must have some skills.Some people born with talent in art and some people not.Just accept it

 

I don't mean I want to be a top graphic designer .
I only want to design an average web graphic design.
Thanks for your feedback .
Thanks Great Designer .

 

No problem mate.This internet is a great mean to learn things.Just be hopeful and try to learn new things.

 

You're right about a couple of things: there's a huge difference between Photoshop and Fireworks, and Fireworks is the proper tool for web design.

I am a graphic designer and I got started at this whole web thing before I even got to college - it's the sort of thing you kind of just need to jump into.

For creating graphics, especially with Fireworks, the single best resource I could point your toward is a joomla template called RokWebify. They give the theme out for free, but you also show you how to modify and update the theme in Fireworks because they give you the source .png they made it all from.

What you need to use it is an installation of the Joomla! content management system (which I also highly recommend) and that means you probably need your own hosting.

60$ for a domain and a year of hosting might sound like an investment, but think of it this way, for an additional 10$ you could add another domain and host a second site on the same space (fr 40$ a year I have 10gb of space at GoDaddy). So, if you were to charge 50$ within the next year, to build and host one website (which is a steal) you'd have all of your costs covered. Sell another at 50$ and you're making 50$ profit, or paying for a second year of your hosting for free.

http://demo.rockettheme.com/rokwebify/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/samples/rokwebify.html
http://www.rockettheme.com/joomla-tutorials/template-tutorials/rokwebify
joomla.org
godaddy.com (and a hint, google coupon codes for godaddy, you can likely knock 20% off your purchase if you just use your head and find a coupon online that's still active!)

Best of luck to you, youre more than equipped with the tools to do this, and the work itself isn't hard to do, I think the hardest part of learning it is knowing what to do, and you shouldn't have too much of a problem after this

Hope to see some of your designs on here in the near future!

 

besides the technical skills, you also need the creative side; not everyone has that.

 

Actually most people do, its just that we tend to train people towards developing skills instead of developing creativity.

Basic aesthetics actually have a fairly scientific foundation, and if you try to find some good books on that then you will likely open up a lot of creative potential.

Other than that, just keep practicing. As a bonus, if you're familiar with your tools (aka. you do all the tutorials and such so that you know how to make any particular effect) then when you suddenly have inspiration and want to design something you dont get held up trying to implement it.

 

Hey dont worry. Just practice various tutorials. abduzeedo is a great site (cant post links yet)

Tutorials/photoshop. Very good site which may help with some "inspiration". Not only one out their but helps me alot.

 

I'm somewhere in the middle on the whole talent thing.

I don't believe it's anything people CANNOT do if they set their mind and their heart to it, but it sure comes easier for some than others.

You're right, being creative is a skill in itself, a way of thinking, just like the logical and analytical problem solving skills programmers use is another entirely different way of thinking.

With creative thinking, it's important to find out what inspires you, and be inspired every single day. Express yourself how you need to. If you're trying to make a website, but you feel like singing, then sing. If you feel like cooking or cleaning - those are also creative tasks that you can express yourself through. Keep your mind focused and it will come to you.

I can understand your frustration - I have learned the hard way to stay inspired and to think creatively, but sometimes there's a task - like Adobe Flash, that although I have the brains to do, I just don't have the patience. It's easy for me to sit at a command-line and hack video card drivers for hours at a time, but sitting with an actionscript window and not knowing what to do drives me wild after just a few minutes.

Pace yourself, you can overcome it, but I think it's more like training a muscle - you need to work it out daily, but only a little at a time, and after a few months, you'll be strong. Try too much at once and you'll hurt yourself, and when you try too hard you won't accomplish anything at all.

Get yourself acquainted with Fireworks better. Just do some tutorials to learn your tool the best you can and that will certainly help when it comes time to execute an idea you have in your head.

There are many great tutorial sites out there, and although I'm unaware of any fireworks-specific ones, most of the illustrator and photoshopones can also be done in Fireworks.

Vectortuts
PSDtuts

Also, for inspiration look up and bookmark (and regularily check)

designfloat.com
smashingmagazine.com
cssvault
faveup
command shift 3

I know you can do this because the fact that you have the software, the desire and the knowledge to get to this forum to write these posts means you have everything you need already. Best of luck, web design can be one of the most rewarding things to do, I know over time you'll really grow to like it.

 

Its also worth noting that inspiration doesnt come when you sit down, it happens throughout the rest of your life. I remember when doing design in school I had a project where I had to produce a set of marketing materials for a local event (it was an assassins game).

I had no idea what so ever what to do. Nothing. No coherent branding existed, it was all from scratch, and I needed something catchy. I drew sketches of a basic design, I wracked myself trying to figure out what I was going to do. Then it came to me while I was walking past a subway station thinking about something else.

Thats generally how creativity works, you think about it really hard for a while then forget about it, and somewhere in your subconcious it just floats around until it hits something.