What are the best resources (i.e. tutorials, video keynotes, blog posts, etc) that best assist graphic designers understand the paradigm of website design? As a web designer, I'm really interested in having my sister (a graphic designer) working with me. How to best explain her how to design for the screen, with practical and easy-to-learn resources (i.e. how to build website layouts for the web) without having to spend time with books?
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2 Answers
I'm a former print designer who happily made the transition to web design. Your sister already has a great head start; the same concepts of hierarchy, grid systems, and typography translate wonderfully from print to Web, so she won't have to relearn those.
To begin her journey as a Web designer, I'd recommend that she should:
Learn the differences
Brian Hoff's advice for print designers transitioning to web design is a great place to start. Jakob Nielsen also has some slightly higher-level advice for print designers from 1999 that's still worth reading.
Learn basic HTML/CSS
The HTML Dog tutorials are great, as are Khoi Vinh's recommendations for print designers if she can make time for the books. (Khoi's book, Grid Principles for Web Design is handy for all designers too.) Finally, the ThinkVitamin videos on HTML/CSS are among the best around if she prefers to learn that way, and the Web Development from Scratch series on Net Tuts looks promising too.
Learn to use FTP
It's worth her learning how to upload HTML, CSS, and images if she doesn't know already.
Learn to build a simple site from scratch
Beyond that, you might encourage her to make a simple design in Photoshop or Fireworks, perhaps for a personal portfolio site or blog, and to turn that design into HTML and CSS using only a text editor and a web browser. Web Design Tuts has a walkthrough to help with that.
Learn from you
Having a mentor to call upon helps no end, so the best thing she could do is to learn from you. Encourage her to share her designs at their early stages and offer suggestions. Help her see that as web designers, we're just solving on screen the same problem that print designers have long been solving on paper: how to order information in a way that people can best understand, use, and fall in love with.
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+1 for "Learn to build a simple site from scratch" - the most common problems I've seen with sites built by print designers bringing their craft to the web have been misuse of the medium (i.e. an entire e-commerce website made out of high-res imagemaps or embedded in a Flash movie) Commented May 17, 2011 at 16:26
I was a graphic designer first then after three years i am now a web developer. When i was migrating i started with first website layout design in photoshop. Sites helped me a lot was from tutsplus network. As i am new here so i cant give too much link. But i think you should checkout the psd.tutsplus.com site. They have some good psd web interface design tutorials from industry leader web artists. Here is one of my all time favorites.
Also try her signup for deviantart (if she not yet). I think every designer should join this community too. There are lots of web interface design groups they all are mainly graphic designer.
It is good thing you have a sister to work with you. I wish i had one!! :)
