I've been thinking recently about bettering myself as I've definitely come to the end of what my (very) basic graphic design skills can do.
Seeing what some of you guys submit has really inspired me to take the step towards something more advanced than MSPaint, hoping eventually to try my hand at a bit of web design.
my question is this: will photoshop/imageready (which I have, but have never been patient enough to learn) be enough, or should I be looking more to illustrator, or something of that ilk?
Any advice on where to start would be a great help.
Photoshop/Imageready will be fine for creating graphics for your site, but you really should be thinking about your content before you even consider clicking the Photoshop icon.
Unless you have a good idea of your site structure you will probably end up with a very good looking mess.
Create a plain site in HTML without graphics to get the site working first. then look into what design will fit that site.
As far as software goes. Learn some of the basics of HTML without the aid of a piece of software (use Notepad). Then you will have a better idea of what is going wrong, if you trade up to Front Page or Dreamweaver and the pages don't work.
I use Dreamweaver exclusively for my sites. I correct the html by hand. I write my CSS and JavaScript by hand. Most of my graphics are created in Photoshop.
Excellent, I'm pleased to hear you say that photoshop will do, as I have enough on my plate wading through photshop tutorials at the moment without having to learn another application from scratch.
Fair point about planning the content first, but the visual side of things was more what I was uncertain of.
Do you tend to use vector or raster imaging for your site? I heard that photoshop was more raster-orientated.
I'm a dreamweaver man myself. Been using it since it was Dreamweaver 2. I've just "upgraded" to photoshop from Fireworks (funny as they are now owned by the same company). I agree with Giraffe. Whenever I've talked to anyone about a site, it's always been about content first, then all the bells and whistles later. In my experience content has usually dictated the look and feel of the site. As far as vector vs raster imaging, it depends on what you are trying to do. Mostly i've used raster imaging for my sites.
Style over substance! is what I would like to say, but to be true, style and substance should go hand in hand. Given to me, i'd design the site to match the content.
Of course, I look up, and see that aepoch has already said what I wanted to say.
The problem with raster imaging surely, is that it risks image degradation / sizing problems when viewed at differnent resolutions. Would 1024 x 768 or thereabouts be a good optimum size to use?
It depends. I would design for the lowest common resolution out there. Believe it or not, there are people still stuck at 800 X 600. So using internet explorer as a basis, I'd say design your site with a screen of 760 X 420. Now if you wanted to start with 1024 X 768, then your site should be designed at 955 X 600 to accomodate all the toolbars that come with most browsers (you should assume that no one is customizing their browsers at this point). Though with CSS you can design it for a lower resolution, but have it expand to accomodate higher resolutions. As far as degradation is concerned, you won't have a problem with that as the graphics won't expand depending on the resolution unless you're doing this in flash and then you'd use vector graphics Hope that helps.
