Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

mix123 · Jan 26, 2006, 02:53 AM

Im currently a first year Computer Science student. And recently I have become very interested in design (Flash, Web, Graphic). So I've recently started playing around with flash, dreamweaver and photshop. But i'm just curious did everyone on here go to school for design or just start enjoying it and just went from there. By the way I'm buying a Imac in the near future aswell

ICD2k3 · Jan 26, 2006, 10:09 AM

I started getting really interested junior year of highschool, from there I went to school for design... which is where I am right now... In a New Media Design computer lab.

art_director · Jan 26, 2006, 05:40 PM

For me it started with drawing logos in the 3rd grade and memorizing TV commercials – many of them I know to this day. It's a sickness.

Macola · Jan 26, 2006, 11:26 PM

I wanted to travel to Jupiter but was too young to join NASA, so I decided to design a spacecraft to travel to Jupiter instead

billy_d_goat · Jan 29, 2006, 12:45 PM

I think computers and school are where a lot of people get into design these days. I actually started about 12 years ago on a Quadra 660av of all things. The high school I attended had a terrible graphics/media program. Actually, it didn't even really use computers at that point. I was interested in layout, DV, etc. So, I kinda set off on my own to learn it.

The problem today is finding a niche, though, as a designer. There are so many people out there that bill themselves as media designers, desktop publishers, etc. For me, I've actually gotten into GUI design and providing tech support to designers and design firms. Of course, I still do all my own personal design too.

Mix123- if you can mix programming with design, that is a pretty decent set of skills to have.

mix123 · Jan 29, 2006, 06:55 PM

that's what i'd like to end up doing with my computer science degree.

bluedog · Jan 31, 2006, 05:31 PM

Mix123,

When I was attending a 4year college and determining my major, I just couldn't imagine anything other than art. Finding the practical application for art, I ended up with design which merged both of my interests in art and in computers fairly well. I love the physicality of printed items and real-world artwork. I took some CS courses but didn't fully pursue the programming side of things. Now I do a lot of web development including programming, go figure.

One word of wisdom, "pursue the things you enjoy *and* have a propensity to do."

You mention working from the computer science side of things and going to the creative/art/design side of things. If you feel you are a stronger programmer than artist, you can try and develop your creative talents. But in the workplace, it is important to have the initiative AND the talent to complete your work.

Your confidence can make a difference, but if you are competing against others who have a stronger talent or greater drive they will get the job or advance. Make sure you choose the field/balance between what you think you'd like to do with what is something you are good at that will put you at the top of your game.

I've seen programmers who think they can be designers and produce great code, but the graphics leave a lot to be desired. I happen to be a designer who thinks I can program (any programmer could tell that I'm better with graphics than I am with programming). But I get the job done and the background I have at least lets me complete a job when necessary.

Good luck and immerse yourself in the things that matter for your field of interest.

tpicco · Jan 31, 2006, 08:54 PM

I needed to do something for a living, wanted to have a career, and seemed to have a good eye for design...

mix123 · Feb 1, 2006, 03:41 AM

Originally Posted by bluedog

Mix123,

When I was attending a 4year college and determining my major, I just couldn't imagine anything other than art. Finding the practical application for art, I ended up with design which merged both of my interests in art and in computers fairly well. I love the physicality of printed items and real-world artwork. I took some CS courses but didn't fully pursue the programming side of things. Now I do a lot of web development including programming, go figure.

One word of wisdom, "pursue the things you enjoy *and* have a propensity to do."

You mention working from the computer science side of things and going to the creative/art/design side of things. If you feel you are a stronger programmer than artist, you can try and develop your creative talents. But in the workplace, it is important to have the initiative AND the talent to complete your work.

Your confidence can make a difference, but if you are competing against others who have a stronger talent or greater drive they will get the job or advance. Make sure you choose the field/balance between what you think you'd like to do with what is something you are good at that will put you at the top of your game.

I've seen programmers who think they can be designers and produce great code, but the graphics leave a lot to be desired. I happen to be a designer who thinks I can program (any programmer could tell that I'm better with graphics than I am with programming). But I get the job done and the background I have at least lets me complete a job when necessary.

Good luck and immerse yourself in the things that matter for your field of interest.

This is my first year of school and I am trying to keep a very open mind. I had no idea how self gratifying design could be until I started looking into it and discovering it. Who knows where my education or my up and coming career will end up.

TurboMac · Feb 1, 2006, 02:32 PM

Failed in Business at OSU - Figured I would go back to what I have always been good at - Drawing. Which lead me the Graphic Design. Got my degree and the rest is history.

dav · Feb 3, 2006, 05:14 PM

i went from engineering school to undecided. took a class in graphic design, had a great professor. but i think i was looking for a mesh of science/technology and art. i had a strong math/science background, but a love for art. among what i consider to fit that scope (photography, architecture, etc.), i went with graphic design because i was mostly facinated with communication.
as i get older, i find myself more and more interested in fine art.

yugyug · Feb 5, 2006, 08:47 AM

Art was my favourite subject at school, although I was a good all rounder. Not wanting to go straight into univesity after school I hung out a lot and ended up promoting dance parties and club nights. As much as the scene was fun it was tragic and I realised what I really enjoyed was creating the flyers, ads and other visual stuff for the clubs. So I went back to university and got a degree in design. I got sidetracked at uni though and majored in furniture and object design, but now I'm back in the trenches as a graphic designer.

I should probably add that prior to uni I had a couple of years experience in tech support and document database systems, which has come in handy a bit.

EFFENDI · Feb 6, 2006, 06:25 AM

Well, it started at a young age for me, drawing and painting any chance I could get. My first "big" experience with graphic design didn't come until High School, in my Business Arts design class. All the way through highschool, I was creating club flyers and handouts, desiging websites, business cards, etc. I still do things for friends and family, but never made a cent. 3 years out of school now, and I have still not taken professional training. Basically just took my time learning on my own, taught myself everything I know about design. I have always had an eye for it. No, I don't call myself a designer, but someday, I will do something with this ability.

sara · Feb 7, 2006, 09:39 AM

eversince when I was a kid, I love skeching and playing with clays. I also get ideas from watching Art Attack!

_________________________
Business Cards Printing: Design and Print Online

godzookie2k · Feb 7, 2006, 02:51 PM

Ever since i used to use harvard graphics 1.0 on my 286 to make stick man cartoons.

bluedog · Feb 7, 2006, 03:00 PM

I cut my teeth on harvard graphics too! That was after CocoMaxIII on a TRS-80!

bluedog · 06:16 PM

<arg> double-post

godzookie2k · Feb 7, 2006, 04:10 PM

Holy crap I thought I was alone! haha

andi*pandi · Feb 7, 2006, 04:14 PM

I bounced between the english dept and communications department, and decided that I could always read for the joy of it, but it wouldn't pay the bills. Via a really nice professor, discovered I was good at design.

eyevaan · Feb 8, 2006, 04:54 PM

failed as a computer science major . . .

just kidding
actually am a failed BASIC programmer - used to draw all the time as youngin' and then as a teen decided for all my love of computers there was going to be another way to do art and work on the machines . . . unfortunately my idea was 8 years too early and in order to make money, I did graphic arts as pasteup artist for a while then as a typesetter, then into PrePress (an industry filled with Psychology degreed people who did not make it as therapists) and there was no design to be found in my career for another 10 years but - that finally changed, I don't know if for the better that is my art is still what it was but at least technically I can do nearly anything I can dream up.

Yose · Feb 9, 2006, 02:16 AM

This is funny, I also used to play with Harvard Graphics on my Dad's company laptop.

Eerie.

Yay!

Weyland-Yutani · Feb 21, 2006, 11:49 PM

My uncle is a professor in graphic design and an artist. He introduced me to design to begin with. A long time ago.

cheers

W-Y

art_director · Feb 21, 2006, 11:58 PM

************************************************** **************************
************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ******************************
Am I alone or should this be a sticky? I LOVE this thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ***************************
*************************************************

Stories about how we all ended up in this business inspire others and remind us why we do what we do.

Super Mario · Feb 22, 2006, 07:49 AM

I am just starting and am finding CSS layouts so difficult. I can't wait for CSS3 to become a standard and for multi column layouts to be as easy to make as typing a letter.

th3ph17 · Feb 22, 2006, 12:44 PM

cut and paste layout and photography [best photo award, 1985 oh yeah] in junior high newspaper. Continued in high school, went to college for computer science and took a computer animation class. Promptly switched to computer graphics. Got stuck in the early wild west days of web design, gradually transitioned into print and advertising.

now i do photography/retouching/design for magazines, and have sold a couple of paintings. its all connected i guess....and it is all i know how to do.

iREZ · Feb 25, 2006, 12:29 AM

i finally broke outta the mold that the crappy LAUSD put me in during my first two years of college. this is where i rediscovered my love for art, but fine arts wasnt for me...i fall into design perfectly. i thank the day i met my first art director who thought me pretty much everything i know now.

godzookie2k · Feb 26, 2006, 03:44 PM

Originally Posted by Super Mario

I am just starting and am finding CSS layouts so difficult. I can't wait for CSS3 to become a standard and for multi column layouts to be as easy to make as typing a letter.

Pure CSS layouts are overrated and a headache. Tables + CSS still rule the school.

Kevin · Feb 27, 2006, 08:02 AM

I started I would say in grade and jr high with the art classes. I was in honors art in all of High School. Of course back then (1991 is when I graduated) DTP wasn't too big. My older brother brought home a Mac not too long after that which had Photoshop 2 and Freehand. Not a year later I bought my own and taught myself.

Been doing it ever since.

Rose · Feb 28, 2006, 12:16 PM

i am just starting and i will set adobe online test i hope y summer

epluth · 10:40 AM

started drawing at early age... excelled in gs and hs, so in college, bought a pc, got in touch with how all the programs work, bought a mac, then another mac, and so on... 11 years later, designer, director. Use adobe cs, flash, html, etc...

euchomai · Mar 8, 2006, 12:23 PM

The office needed someone and I volunteered, it blossomed from there. Classes and such followed, I had no idea I had a propensity for design at all.

normdzn · Mar 10, 2006, 02:11 PM

Hi Y'all,

This is easy, after bouncing from one major to the next, hearing my parents say I couldn't make money as an artist/designer (starving artist mentality) they finally broke down after seeing me transfer majors for the first three years of college—they let me graduate with my Graphic Design degree.

Which brings up a side note, why is my Graphic Design degree a B.S. and not a B.A. Any thoughts?

normdzn · Mar 10, 2006, 02:23 PM

Alright!! Two stars, I'm moving up in the world!!

andi*pandi · Mar 10, 2006, 10:06 PM

mine is a BA, so I don't know what's up with yours.

DekuDekuplex · 08:15 PM

I earned a B.S. in Computer Science at Yale University, but hated programming and found designing algorithms more interesting. I was really interested in taking a course in 3D computer graphics animation, but the only course in this field required linear algebra, which I hadn't mastered. I wanted to design a virtual world. I also enjoyed tinkering around with the GUI layout aspects of OpenWindows 3.0 on the Sun Sparc® Stations, and using Mac's to write papers.

A few years after graduation, I walked into the Apple Store SoHo, and saw a presentation by two teenagers with no design experience who purchased Final Cut Pro® and used it to tour the country to create an edited video presentation of interviews with one hundred famous people. I thought, "Wow, this is cool!" and got a PowerBook.

Then, while browsing through the local bookstore, I re-discovered two utterly fascinating books by Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information. While I had already come across the first title in college, it had not seemed relevant at the time. As a Mac user now interested in design, however, they both now seemed extremely relevant!

In particular, I was struck by one diagram (which I think was in the first title) that chillingly depicted the dramatic decrease in the number of Napoleon Bonaparte's troops at various chronological, geographic, and strategic stages of his voyage from Paris to Moscow and back again in the Russian Campaign of 1812. Napoleon's troops, which had initially numbered over half a million on June 24, were almost wiped out during the disastrous crossing of the River Beresina, and eventually struggled into Paris on December 7, numbering only between ten to twenty thousand--a loss of between 96% to 98%! No This shocking diagram convinced me of the power of good design.

Later, I came across another fascinating title, Before and After Page Design, by John McWade, that described how to design appealing page layouts for various kinds of publications. This title included many very attractive examples of elegant page layout design.

Then, last year, I chanced upon an occupational IQ test on television in Tokyo that showed that my weakest areas were logic and analysis, while my strongest areas were creativity and imagination, and that recommended that I choose artistry or photography for my occupation. Now I finally understood the reason that I had never enjoyed programming, which required aptitude with logic, and instinctively enjoyed books about design, which required creativity and imagination. This convinced me to get into design.

Now I'm trying to save funds to purchase Adobe® Photoshop® CS2, QuarkXPress® 6.5, and Macromedia® Studio 8 and additional typeface families, such as Stempel Garamond™ Roman, for my PowerBook so that I can design a cool Web site in order to start publishing my own online magazine similar to MACPOWER, a Japanese Macintosh design magazine that I read every month here in Tokyo.

-- DekuDekuplex

Kr0nos · Mar 22, 2006, 12:01 PM

Fine Arts (painting in College) >> Filmschool >> BA Filmstudies >> Surfing the Web for pr0n >> WebDesign >> Photoshop >> Certificate for Digital Publishing >> Design/Print

Super Mario · 04:20 PM

Originally Posted by godzookie2k

Pure CSS layouts are overrated and a headache. Tables + CSS still rule the school.

CSS is as easy as peas.

jamil5454 · Mar 23, 2006, 08:33 AM

I remember in high school I took Art 1 to fulfill my fine arts credit. I drew a portrait of myself in pencil and paper and it made it to the school rotunda and some art contest. Then, in the second semester, we started using oil pastels/colored pencils and I did a replica of a photo of a friend. I made a 65 on the assignment and my friend (who was a girl) thought I made her look ugly on purpose.

I love 3d art, shapes, textures, spatial thinking, but color I just can't do. Music is more my thing anyway.

Amorya · Mar 25, 2006, 08:55 PM

Originally Posted by Super Mario

CSS is as easy as peas.

Peas are not that easy! Sure, eating them is not very taxing, but you try making one!

Same goes for CSS layout... viewing it is fine, but constructing it yourself....