wewalin3

I just started studying graphic design I need some advice on getting started, anybody have some experiences that I can learn from? Tool tips? etc.

Gino

Read designs books, articles, look at work of other designers and try to absorb as much as you can. And never stop designing and learning the programs!

Design is a never ending learning process so you must keep pushing onward! You should learn a lot from these forums once we get more members!

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Elite By Design

I agree with Gino.
I would start by finding some good photoshop tutorial sites. There are tons of them around, just google it.

In my case, after I worked tutorials for a long time, I was so familiar with all the different tools that anytime someone would ask me how to do an effect or make something in Photoshop, I was able to recognize which tools and filters and layer styles to use.

It all takes time and practice. THe more you familiarize yourself with the programs you are using the better off you will be.

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alyCe

Also, you should keep yourself updated with various design-blogs and magazines. Keep yourself updated on the trends, while still defining your own style. At this stage you should probably focus on what mr. elite said, make yourself comfortable with the programs you are going to use (depends on what you aim to do). It's like playing guitar, you have to learn the basic before you start writing your own song. Although if you become really REALLY good at playing guitar, you will probably be a guitar-mastrubator who will play the longest solos and the most advanced songs, and forgetting about the songs qualities in themselves. Master your tools, but don't let what you can do overshadow what you should do. If that made any sense

And are you studying design in a school or by own initiative?

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glunge

infektsu

I don't have time to go into detail I'll try and be more helpful later but... Number one rule for all designers...

SAVE SAVE SAVE!

Man you have no idea how many times I have royally screwed shit up in the past when I forgot to save a document I was working on. I remember this one time I was working on a flash mini site. I finally finished importing all the graphic pieces in to flash and started working on the external swfs for the separate pages. Totally forgot to save (I blame it on working so late). I got 2 pages done, power went out and when I booted back up I was back to just having the main page... ARG!!!

SAVE!!!

Gino

I think all designers learn the saving thing the hard way. I've lost plenty of work before saving become second nature to me haha.

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Elite By Design

Yep...save is a big one. I finished an entire site, went on it the next day to do some touch ups and somehow all my layers had been merged. I had to redo the whole thing from scratch.

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infektsu

Haha yeah I've done something like that before too. It was an abstract poster that had about 70 layers... I was pissed.

I had this "aluminum" keyboard (it was really just painted, cheap manufacture) anyways the ctrl and s key were completely black from how many times I saved.