Design courses...

I'm 15. I go to my local high-school and participate in sports after school. But I want to make *money* being a designer and am willing to take courses to do so (and put in quite a bit of money into courses, so long as the investment is lucrative). Does anybody know of any on-line (www.sessions.edu has CRAZY pricing!) or near NJ courses that would raise me to a professional level. Currently, I'm not half bad when compared to everyone else (have some work at http://maca.clanpages.com/nyc and http://maca.clanpages.com ), but I want to become better. Much better. I seriously don't think I can do it by myself.

If not, could you recommend any other methods on becoming better? Certain sites or books? And please, for the love of God, don't just say tutorials!

Thanks,
Sauronone
Anthony Bernstein
[email]sauronone@home.com[/email]

Personally.. I'd say put your ambition on the shelf for a while, and just have fun screwing around with photoshop. Take advantage of the free education provided by your high school and take some art courses. The internet has just about everything you need in the way of lessons and tutorials for free as well. Your library (public or school) can order you in books for free too.


If you want good sites just do a keyword search on this forum.

Hanging around forums like this helps too, posting up work and getting it critiqued and what not.

You need to focus on web site usability. The pop-ups you use on all of your sites are really annoying. As for books, just go to the bookstore or library and read everything you can about design theory and web site design theory. Learning the latest photoshop tricks will not help you at all in the long run. You need a good artistic base to build on. The tools will change over time, and then all of your knowledge will be worthless if you only focus on how to do things in certain programs. Learn how to be creative and express yourself in any medium. And definitely, don't just do it for the money. If that's the only reason you want to get into it, then just quit right now. You will not do well if you aren't in it for the love of creating and are just worried about money... especially when you are only 15. Have fun while you still can and don't worry about money for a couple more years.

Well, do you want to be a better designer or a better web designer. Design is everywhere, you just need to start looking for it. Look at books and magazines on architecture and graphic design, get away from the web and look at print design. I buy a LOT of books on design to look at things that work and figure out why. Taking art courses is a great idea, all mediums like that affect design.

I will recommend a book:
Visual Literacy

it's full of design problems and examples of solutions that other design students have arrived at to that problem. awesome learning book.

above all else, you've gotta be willing to play. play in photoshop, sketch, take photos...it all makes you a better designer...

hope that helps...

chris