I wish I had cake in math class, that would have been a total game changer.

http://www.dontfeartheinternet.com/

Plus on their Links webpage, they have wonderful resources. Hope it helps, it did for me!
Ellyn

a) Glad you say so. Sad possibility is that people may be offended if you try to cross your job description into their territory. Like when some marketing people think they can design better than someone who actually earned a degree in graphic design. Or someone who studied business and declare they can design well because they took one or two design courses but didn’t major or minor in it. People are just doomed. You’re damned if you only stick to exactly what your job description says and you’re damned if you step out of bounds into someone else’s job responsibilities and duties.

b) It would be cool to create a game.

c) I’m sure universities and colleges offer motion graphics courses, but for graphic design majors I’m sure it would be offered as an optional course, not mandatory.

d) For some reason I can’t store into long-term memory the difference between ROM and RAM.

e) I never took Calculus, I learned about cake in my university math class.

Learning things is not the same as being an expert. I want to know how things work. That doesn’t mean I will then do all the things I’ve learned on a regular basis. Learning is for discovery. I can learn about something, and if it doesn’t tug at my heartguts I can still retain that information, and move on to learning something else. I want to be better at what I have to offer as a creative person. Will I be able to do everything? Most likely no. I only have two hands, one brain, 24 hours in the day and have a knack for procrastination and watching Netflix. But will I be able to understand projects on multiple levels and collaborate across departments? Most likely yes.

a) Absolutely. More understanding across party lines leads to better communication and a better product in the end. Some of the smartest developers (and people) I know have also dabbled in certain areas of print, or started off on the complete other end of the design/creative spectrum.

b) If it’s something you’re passionate about, sure! Technically, if you were to build a basic “choose your own adventure game” it would be a creative warm up to the “if ___ then ___” coding language that a lot of today’s web development relies on.

c) Again, absolutely. If some university were to create the perfect curriculum for a modern graphic designer, it should be included.

d) Having married a nerd and constantly surrounded by other nerds (I use the term as an endearment to all the insanely smart people in my life), I can’t imagine not being tech savy. Having a basic knowledge also helps when it comes time to figure out web hosting.

As for all the other topics you’ve mentioned, you’re talking to a girl who spent her youth playing Encarta 96′s Mindmaze (google it). I’m not kidding. I am a curious person, and I will always want to learn. Will I want to sit through learning Calculus? No, because I’m not passionate about numbers. But I know it’s a valuable skill set and know what to look for if I ever need a human that is passionate about them.

I used Lynda tutorials to get my feet wet, and while Dreamweaver isn’t perfect, it helped me understand the basics in an Adobe environment I was comfortable in for the time being. Having been an intern here and there, having someone breakdown the elements of a website, and explaining wire-framing was really helpful to me and my design process.

There are content management systems for every shade of the web, and finding the one that works best for the design project is the way to go. WordPress might be just fine 89% of the time, but it’s nice to know what the more powerful systems have to offer.

Deep I know. I felt like I was on a roll for ranting. Feel free to not respond, just throwing some thoughts out there.

I was just talking to a few people the other day – my intern is having some trouble designing for web, I even told her to look at and copy examples from around the web – maybe copy me the examples of which she is emulating, and she didnt know what I mean. And she’s an exceptional designer.

Just goes to show how schools aren’t really living up to what you’re paying them. I think that most designers should be subscribed to techcrunch and fromupnorth and a few other sites so they stay “in the loop” and constantly try and emulate what they see.

Relying on Muse (or even DreamWeaver) is a huge hinderance at the moment, in my opinion. Give me WordPress any day. I’ve never even used Drupal. I tried Squarespace for a few months, but to be honest WordPress has a community like no other and documentation for their plugins out the wazoo. I have a hard time taking web-designers seriously who don’t use a CMS like WordPress