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With a bit of experience in self-teaching you can more easily decide if you really want or need the discipline of formal coursework in some area or other. But always remember if chosing a course -- there's often a difference between those who teach and those who can do.
I know for instance that part of a "web marketing" course at a major university included reading WebmasterWorld on a regular basis. That says a lot about where a good education is available.
Good luck!
There are significant advantages to a web designer that has a strong graphics background. While in most cases HTML coding can be learned, graphics design is a skill that you either have it - or you don't.
Having combined skills also makes the project more efficient to build, and offers more synergy, since one person is able to balance the graphics and code, rather than disparate elements from several people that can often take a lot of additional work to get to the desired result.
One caveat to remember is that the web consists of significantly lower resolution than you are used to. While a huge, splashy design may make an attractive magazine ad, the same size and detail generally makes for a poor - and very slow loading - web page design.
One caveat to remember is that the web consists of significantly lower resolution than you are used to. While a huge, splashy design may make an attractive magazine ad, the same size and detail generally makes for a poor - and very slow loading - web page design.
Indeed, and this is a problem that many (not all, but many) graphic designers have making the transition.
This offers you an opportunity. Web design or marketing or programming is all about finding a niche for yourself.
If you can marry your graphic skills with a use of CSS to create quick-loading yet visually pleasing sites then, IMO, that gives you a big advantage over both trad table-based coders married to their blocks of colour and converted graphic designers still stuck in offline mode. Have a look at zengarden or some of the showcase CSS collections to see what I mean.
Web design and traditional graphic design are two distinctly different mediums, and there is a very different approach to presentation. Do not fall into the "online brochure" trap.
You will also find a tendency to want to hold hard to your preference for certain graphical considerations, among them your preference for specific fonts as part of the design. Since a font will only display on a user's system if they have that font, to retain your design you may wind up making all display heads/subheads/and even text bodies out of graphics. DON'T DO IT! I've seen sites that are 100% graphics out of sheer stubborness - when search engines index these sites, they come back with ZERO content as search engines need to index TEXT. Additionally they become a nightmare to maintain.
Look at this font limitation, and other limitations you will encounter such as variable resolutions, browser differences, and dificulties you will encounter in positioning (this is not QuarkXpress :-) ) in the same way Piet Mondrian did his colors: build beautiful things with a limited palette. You can build an equally effective websites in this medium but it's a whole new canvas. Explore it and have fun!
Lastly I would stay out of WYSIWYG editors, on the whole they generate very bad code and when something breaks you won't know how to fix it. HTML/CSS is a very easy markup to learn, start by getting right into hand-coding or at least shortcut tools to help you. Macromedia Homesite is my favorite editor.
An IT friend at work also told me to learn CSS. All of you have given me valuable advice. Thank you. I am starting online classes Tuesday and hopefully this time next year (if not before) I can tell them to take this job and .... well, you know! :-)
