Please tell us about the resources you’ve used thus far and would recommend to others (or steer them away from). Take a moment to share your educational background (both academic and work-based) and point out things that have helped or hindered you along the way from that education.
Wow. That’s a loaded question! There’s so much to talk about here. First, let me say I did not have a college degree when I began my business, though I recently finished my associate degree in business and I’m planning to continue on in an art direction. Many of the universities which offer any kind of web design related course of study are largely behind the times, so I would not recommend spending the money and time on a web design degree at this time. I would focus more on business or graphic design. There are much better, quicker, and cheaper ways of learning web design today.
My work background is diverse and well-rounded, including all kinds of retail and technical jobs. My most recent job was as a trainer and consultant for a copier company which was a great experience and a huge benefit to my current work, particularly with all the experience I gained in the printing industry and studying color.
As for resources, there are plenty! I read a lot of blogs and spend some time in discussion boards. My favorite is Godbit.com which is focused on churches and enabling churches to design standards-compliant websites. They are incredibly friendly and generous with sharing what they’ve learned as well. Actually, I’ve found that most of the really great web designers are very open about what they do and are very helpful in sharing (via their blogs) what they’ve learned and how they got where they are. You can find more about specific blogs I read and tools I use, software and extras, at my website. I’m always open to sharing things that make my life easier as a designer.
If there’s one thing I can tell any designer (or aspiring designer) to stay away from is WYSIWYG editors, or point-and-click website building programs. Work hard to learn the code and build a site from scratch using a text-editor. Point-and-click editors tend to put out bad code and make a website less accessible and less user-friendly. Learn to write code by hand, line by line.
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