If you want a CAREER, you're pretty late in the game, but it's not impossible. To be successful as one, it's going to take a LONG time. Everyone 'thinks' they're a designer, because they can export a jpeg in Photoshop. It's very degrading to the title. It's very artistic and takes a lot of time to learn and develop. There's no shortcuts in this, it's an art.
If you want to just design things like logos, pictures, graphics, posters, etc, then you will want to start in photoshop. If you want to head more to the web design, I would start off in xhtml/css, xml, ajax, ror, Flash etc asap. They're the newest best things, so instead of learning something from 1997, you're up to date. Though you may not have the foundation from such far away, it'll fast forward you to relevent technologies.
The biggest thing is to get involved in design forums. Good ones, not crappy ones with 50 users on some fake domain. Look over some award sites, real ones, not ones like coolwebtop10 etc. Recognized award sites have great communities and examples of stuff you want to aim for. They also just get you into the winning mind set. But realize starting off, you're not going to make anything nice if you have no previous experience. Sorry to be blatent, but quality standards are really high this day in age. Everybody starts off bad, just learning and getting the feel for it. But over time, you'll get much better, you just have to stick with it and keep learning. |