age of most people

Well I don't think color theory is truly a science. I started taking a class on color theory, but dropped it after a week because it was a waste of money.

If I need help with colors, I ask my girlfriend...women know colors.

Very stupid move, go back and take the class.
Color theory IS a science, but most people don't think they need it and spend their $$ on a Photoshop class instead. You can skip Photoshop classes, it's a "tool" class and can be learned from a book, online or cd rom.
Color theory and type are the 2 things that all wanna be designers skip. We all think we know color, but pick up a book on the subject or take a class and you'll see what you're mising. There's more to color than putting together a color scheme.

My point you'll be a better designer with the knowledge.

I agree with Dahl, type and color are very important. I only had one semester of college before I left to work full time designing, and I kinda wish I had stayed and taken more classes. I didn't have a color class, but I had a typography class, and that was by far my favorite class out of any class I've ever taken. I'm going to be buying some books on color soon as well. But dahl is also right about photoshop, quark, etc. They are just tools. You can take a class in those, then in 6 months that program will be out of date, and the things your learned are worthless. But if you learn the basics of design, they will stick with you for life. Then you can keep up with the software tools as you go along.

One book I've really enjoyed reading is Visual Intelligence. It's not only about color and how we perceive it, but how our brain creates the world around us by constructing 3d shapes, shadows etc. Very interesting. Pick it up at amazon.com...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393319679/o/qid=987562356/sr=2-1/103-2165490-6820611

Preach it guys

Chris (who's working on some "educational" ideas to be hopefully unveiled soon...)

Well I'll take your word for it, from someone who has actually taken the class.

But for one thing, designing was(is) not my major, I took it because it sounded like an easy "A". But another reason I dropped the class was because the prof. was a total dipshit.

I suppose if I take it with a diff. prof. it'll prob be diff. Since I grad. from the current institution this spring, and transferring to a diff. school next fall, maybe I'll take it there.

Sure, sometimes you'll have bad classes. I've had several myself.
But look at the whole design field from a greater distance.
Before the desktop area started, people would "slave" for years learning design. After the 1980's many people thought these things didn't mean much anymore, just look at the web, it's a wasteland of bad design. All I'm saying if you wanna be good at this you've to learn more than the lasso tool in Photoshop.

I think that hits the nail on the head, the term "designer" is unfortunately synonomous with "software operator" these days. Design is so much more than that, but people seem to think that they know the tools so they can just bevel a logo and throw it up top, put the navigation down the left side and they're ready to go.

Personally, I don't have a degree in design (well, not graphic design anyway) so I found myself playing catch-up once I started working doing web stuff. My first job was mostly web production so there really wasn't much to it as far as design, but my second job title was actually designer and I really had to start learning more than the basic stuff for the caliber of clients we had. I started looking at design magazines (How, Print, ID), reading more books on design, looking at really good sites and trying to figure out why they were good. After actually studying this stuff and learning I actually started getting better, go figure ;) And I'm still learning, got a long ways to go...

Moral of the story? There's more to it than knowing Photoshop. And keep watching this site as we figure out how to help with that ;)

Chris