Beef up my web design skills?

Question

I have been doing corporate web applications since graduating with my bscs 2 years ago. My career goal is to one day( hopefully soon ) be able to either start my own web development/design company or work for one. I am currently changing companies so that I can have more time to reach these goals. This new company is going to allow me to go back to school if I want.

So my problem is that I need to improve my web design skills. I feel I have the development part down pat. I will say that I feel that I have potential in this area since I already have an artistic streak. I'm thinking that maybe I should go back and finish a ba in graphic design. I only have 44 hours left. The cool thing about if I go back for this degree is that at the same time I will also develop other artistic interest of mine .I also could just try to teach myself. I'm sure there are other ways to beef up my web design skills. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You only have 44 hours of work remaining to complete for you to get your BA? Do it! 44 hours is 8.5 hours per day for 5 days! or 4.25 hours per day over 10 days.

Answer 2

Design is 99% `inspiration' and 1% original thought (even then it isn't yours)

By inspiration I mean look at other people's work and get inspired. Designers rip eachother off all the time and call it a trend. If all designer's work was original then design would advance alot quicker than it does.

Get good at observing trends, copying them and injecting your 1%

Answer 3

Look at many pages as you can and get inspiration from them! I've always liked this Einstein quote:

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources

I don't mean the designers steal work all from each other but they have always a reference or a style based in the work of...

I share you some sites that have helped me out so much:

Train your eyes

Caroline Guevin has a good repository of good designing work in her site netdiver.net

Webby Awards have a good listing of cool websites, there are other sites focused in flash work in the FWA

Share with the community

This is what we programmers do all the time right? Having a community makes every member stronger so I recommend you to get a Deviantart account and upload as much work as you can.

Do it well

The CSS Zen Garden is a good reference for you to learn and/or train you knowledge about CSS and table-less web designs.

Answer 4

Getting further education credentials (especially when you're so close) sounds like a really good idea. It certainly couldn't hurt.

As far as improving your design skills, I'm sure you have plenty of experience reading through the classic designers and thinking about how to apply them to what you want to do. I might suggest that you read some blogs that talk about combining those classic design techniques and web development such as Web Designer Depot.

If you'd rather read a book, I recommend Designing Web Interfaces. It's recent, it's relevant and it's beautifully laid out. I really enjoyed reading through it.