Hi, I am a programmer BUT i wanted to learn "How to Design" 1. Icons 2. Website Designing. How i can learn these skills? How i should approach this? Thanks.
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If you're a programmer you can learn pretty easily how to transfer a few of the skills you've learned to web development and programming. You'd need to learn how to code in JavaScript, PHP and other server-side languages for a more full insight to web development.
I would go this route first, then I would begin to comprehend the design aspect of things. This will be your front-end design. Learning HTML/XHTML and CSS is vital for this. Icons can be designed using Photoshop, and most are designed with similar programs. Take a look at several helpful online-Photoshop tutorials.
I would go this route first, then I would begin to comprehend the design aspect of things. This will be your front-end design. Learning HTML/XHTML and CSS is vital for this. Icons can be designed using Photoshop, and most are designed with similar programs. Take a look at several helpful online-Photoshop tutorials.
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The advice above will teach you how to produce designs, but not how to create them. For that you need to learn to see - and to think.
To see the world the way a designer sees - in terms of color and line and shape - a shortcut is the Before&After tutorials at www.bamagazine.com - that'll give you a decent start. Also head for aiga.org for a more high-brow vision, and take some classes too, if you can. The experience of exposing your work to a group of peers, and critiquing it as a group, is invaluable.
By learn to think, I don't mean the logic of coding - I mean that you need to develop a point of view, so you have something to say. A lot of that will come from your life experience already - the things you've been exposed to outside the office. Then, if you don't already have a fairly diverse university-level education outside computer science, you want to broaden your horizons beyond your own experience to include the great art, literature and philosophy of the world - and the math and science as well, if it's new to you. Read the classics of literature; study world history from several points of view. Absorb the world's great art, both abstract and representational.
For all of this, a great resource is a catalogue/site combo called the Great Courses. Geared toward affluent older people, frankly, it's a series of university courses made more entertaining so people who buy the courses will study them for fun. Of course, less expensive but more rigorous - and with poorer production quality - will be iTunesU: Lectures on many of the same topics, from many of the same professors, I would imagine, or at least some profs from the same universities.
To see the world the way a designer sees - in terms of color and line and shape - a shortcut is the Before&After tutorials at www.bamagazine.com - that'll give you a decent start. Also head for aiga.org for a more high-brow vision, and take some classes too, if you can. The experience of exposing your work to a group of peers, and critiquing it as a group, is invaluable.
By learn to think, I don't mean the logic of coding - I mean that you need to develop a point of view, so you have something to say. A lot of that will come from your life experience already - the things you've been exposed to outside the office. Then, if you don't already have a fairly diverse university-level education outside computer science, you want to broaden your horizons beyond your own experience to include the great art, literature and philosophy of the world - and the math and science as well, if it's new to you. Read the classics of literature; study world history from several points of view. Absorb the world's great art, both abstract and representational.
For all of this, a great resource is a catalogue/site combo called the Great Courses. Geared toward affluent older people, frankly, it's a series of university courses made more entertaining so people who buy the courses will study them for fun. Of course, less expensive but more rigorous - and with poorer production quality - will be iTunesU: Lectures on many of the same topics, from many of the same professors, I would imagine, or at least some profs from the same universities.