Designer Roll call

[Helios]

As I've been browsing through the many, many threads here, I've noticed quite a few designery people. It's def cool to see a mix of webmasters, IMers and designers (getting along) all in one place.

I thought it'd be cool to find a bit out about each other, and maybe get this section of the forums jump-started a little.

I'll start. I collected comics at a young age, and got into drawing/sketching shortly there after. This lead to me being interested in all things art, I would get lost in that section of the central library. Once it came time for me to figure out what I was suppose to do with my life, I started to look into the various college fine arts programs. I found while taking the tours of these programs that the people there generally freaked me the hell out.

It was around this time that I started spending a lot of time on my computer, around the Photoshop 5 era. From this I came to the conclusion that ART+COMPUTER = GRAPHIC DESIGNER. I ended up settling on that choice, and recently finished a 3 year GD program. Of course, design ended up being something so much more then the original formula I labeled it with, and has become a huge passion of mine. Advertising, illustration, web design, motion design...I love all of it.

Now I get lost at Chapters/Indigo...you'll find me sitting by the magazine section with a solid stack in my lap. I dig the whole mashup culture thing right now, and I definitely need to work on expanding my shoe collection haha. You can never have enough kicks.

So tell me a bit about yourself...how you got into design, what inspires you, what your passions are!

Jon

[Selena]

basically, it all started with my old best friend.
she had a little geocities site with every ugly graphic on it, and some basic html codes, and a frames layout...it was cute, to me, back then.
we opened many dollistes together...
starting with this one http://www.geocities.com/dadizlilgrl08/frames.html and getting beter after each new geocities account.
sooner or later we wanted to own our own dollsites, and i was clearly progressing much better than her in the graphics world, learning more and more each day.

it was a hobby for me, until i learned of adsense, paypopup, and everything else that earns money online. i started a site called yummiesplash that was a dollsite as well and put paypopup on it. got about 20 dollars and closed it, so i wasted 20 dollars :(

i got into the myspace scene, im good at it, so i figured why not. i changed yummiesplash into a portfolio of myspace graphics, and started trying out my own sites, which havent opened yet because im so busy doing graphics for others...but its getting me great money, so honestly, thats fine as far as im concerned. getting on top of designing for a big market definitely helped me out in the longrun.

my passions, what can i say, im 15, my passions pretty much consist of boys, friends, and finding myself. I'm currently taking pretty much all junior classes, though im a sophomore and all are gifted/honors, minus gym and journalism, journalism being my favorite since i'm going to be layout editor or editor in chief senior year, because i own everyone.

[Greg-J]

I was a designer. For over a decade actually.


Over the past 13 years I have taken a professional journey that went from graphic design, to UI design (I've actually developed the GUI for software programs you graphic designers probably use) to web development to software architecture and all kinds of things in between.

I've noticed some talent on the forums and I'll be keeping an eye on you ;)



Welcome to myspacepros designers, we're happy to have you.

[treacle]

I would not describe myself as a fully blown designer (am a statisician by trade) but I have a keen interest, have studied web design theory and like to "tinker". I've created a number of sites for people using html, css and Flash too and also done the odd graphics work (simple stuff though! :) ).

I'd like to move on to more dynamic code so the MSRS set up has been a good introduction for me. It's good to see that we have a team of designers on here and can learn from each other.

Treacle

[Tfdesigns]

Ohh this is a kool idea.

I've always been a more creative person than academic, when i was younger i used to dabble in a lot of things.. dancing, martial arts, computers (building them, not designing on them), writing, drawing, painting. All the careers i've considered involve creativity.. i can't just sit and read.. or look up history & facts.. not active enough!!

I've been doing that all my life and up until last year (its a year now that i've been in the "web world").. i didn't know i had PSP & PS, they were just another program to me lol. I started out with an msn space (yeh lame i know haha).. just doing the custom html and making my own images to spice up blogs. Then i found kville (forum).. and i read through some of the links to tuts i found and created my own site.. well i've just been getting better and better from there, when i look at my stuff from last year i can see the improvement.

I've had a few domains, sub-domains before.. but now i have too-fresh.net & tf-designs.com.. originally i was going to have tf-designs as a network of all my sites.. but then i realised my graphics are good enough for people to buy, thats when i made the design site and well i turned up here haha! Still not sure what i wanna do with my life (job-wise) but this will do for now lol.

Hope you liked the little trip down memory lane 8-)

[Dean]

Hey, kinda an odd story how I got into web/graphic design.

Ive been a huge wrestling fan for around the last 6 years, and after a year I was completely hooked. Due to this I eventually ended up finding the enormous wrestling world online, if you dont already know then you get wrestling websites for everything. The games, the news and theres also large wrestling graphic communities.

So whilst I was involved in some of these I began creating my first websites, like "Deans WWF website!" lol .. I was young but it was great. Then as I got older I simply learnt more and always wanted to have a bigger/better website, meanwhile I got into wrestling graphic design competitions and such.

Its only recently that I have actually broke of from wrestling, pretty much all my work has been wrestling related. 3D modelling, graphic designing for wrestling RPG games, websites and more.

I enjoy web and graphic design and hope to do this at college, then university to eventually become the next Greg-J :P Nah just a professional web designer. Lately, I have been looking into coding and such as I am not paticularly knowledgable in PHP, Ajax or Javascript which holds me back when designing modern dynamic websites.

:)

Dean

[GREGO]

I love these stories! Dean, I got into the web almost just like you.

I started out on geocities like everyone, i had a website where i basicly just collected internet junk and stuck it on their. I called it kickazzstuff. It wasn't long before i was addicted to trying to get visitors. I eventually learned to layout a table based website and soon made my first .com website kickazzstuff.com It was pretty sweet back in 2000 to walk around high school and advertise your website. my friends and I would record prank calls and put them on there and i had a bunch of media content. the site became a little popular i got up to around 5 - 600 uniques per day. I eventually had to shut down after the gb transfer was being constantly exceded and i didn't have a job yet. then i kinda forgot about web art when i was a jr. and senior in HS, i got caught up for a few years and eventually i came back to it. I'm now attending a local college for an asociates degree in web based Graphic design.

I used to look at graphic design and web design as an absolute passion, but now it's more like a way to make money and work from home. My hope for the future is to create a small network of entertainment and myspace related sites and make money from advertising. My real passion now is UFOlogy and i really want to get a website about aliens and ufos going. I would love to be able to secure a nice income and have all the free time of working from home/doing own thang and really devote time to researching all the stuff i want to learn in the future.

[deep]

well let me just make it short, im a web designer and a graphic designer and a coder.

ive been into web designing for about 2 years but my latest project officialpimpspace.com is my official site that i'll be working on from now on. :)

i got into graphics because I didnt have lot of money to spend and so I went through tutorials to learn how to make glitters and such.

with all he knowledge i had gathered i though i'd move to onto a little advanced, that when I started workin on gens and scripts to make them into a cms type so it can save what users type in instead of just creating a gen that would just have the info for just one time. like my flash slideshow script, users can create albums, images and then have seperate slideshow for each and then all that info is saved so they can go back and edit it later on without chaging any code. pretty cool :)

im still learning more and my next project will be working on myspace maps which will be a challenge but theres nothing so far that i couldnt do if i put my mind into it :)

thats about all so i kinda fit in overall web designer, coder, and graphics designer. :)

[icesar]

This is fun :) Ok, I'm not so much as designer in the graphics sense as in the coding sense. I studied electrical and computer engineering and spent my first few years after school programming and working with circuits for a small biotech company in Hawaii.

After leaving Hawaii and asking myself what I wanted to do, I decided now was the time to start my own business, and I've been launching web sites ever since (I keep track of them at Kokua Web (http://KokuaWeb.com). I also do quite a bit of freelance design ( Kokua Design (http://kokuadesign.com) ) to supplement the small and growing website income :)

[Helios]

So many cool backgrounds! I love reading these stories :punk:

[Andria]

I started with design when i was 16, i'm 23 now (will be in two weeks), started with dollie websites lol. No real background to the story, i'm boring :P

[nsmchris]

I consider myself a designer developer. I was one of the early adopters of the web and had one of the first free graphics websites (Although I didn't capitalize on that :mad: ). I created my first collection of free animated gifs in the early 90's and they were included in about 20 books on web and graphics development. My education is all computer engineering and software development, but I have a fondness for design and still do all the design work for my websites. I'm also a Macromedia/Adobe Group Manager specializing in Flash development.

[cpr]

Been designing for about 6 years now using Photoshop, currently in the process of developing a couple of large sites with two partners!

Online portfolio can be seen here; www.chrisrowe.eu, although it's all old really and I need to get my proper portfolio finished and updated with new work!

About to start a myspace design so i'll be sure to post it once it's finished!

[sshjustkissme]

Pretty much like Selena's history, but I started in sophomore year of high school..where we had to take a technology class in order to graduate, so my teacher put me in Business Images Management. Started out with PSP first and then switched to PS. Forgot how to make all those cool images..the 'professional' ones..lol

First learned coding DIVs from a friend..and then had other tutorials by going to good-tutorials.com ..

[Dale]

Woah! Old thread! Time to bring it back ;)

Okay, I started out on myspace. (I was only 10 when I started) My older friends wanted some layouts, and I was the ONLY one that had Photoshop. so i found some brush sites, made some layouts, etc. Pretty soon I decided to start a different account and make layouts, edit pictures for people, etc. I called it "Pic Me Layouts" (cheesy name, i know). I was getting friend requests everyday, things started getting good. After a few months, I decided it was time for a break so I quit everything for over a year and a half and focused on school and my personal life. I continued making things for my friends and all though. After everything settled, I decided I'd start up again with design so I started another myspace with another designer and we called ourself "Walk the Line Contests" (my partner wanted to run contests :P ). Pretty soon, the name got annoying so we changed to "Hollywood". After a few months, we stopped talking and quit working on our "site". One day, I was on ******* ******* (cant say the name, i promised the guy i wouldnt say anything :P) and I was talking with the owner and he gave me an oppurtunity for a subdomain. (hollywood.xlayoutsx.com <- i still run it). I got it and started working immediatly. I was kind of dumb when it came to all the big HTML codes and all. Found a partner to work with me, and we started adding stuff immediatly. I got bored with it and left it sit for about 1-2 months (BIG mistake). Finally got motivated to go back and work, designed a layout for it, etc etc. Gradually, I started getting more visitors. I used to be excited with 20 UV's a day. My host put me on his site, then my hits more than tripled and went up each month. Blekk, now im here now. I've ran a few other sites and crap. And I'm currently working on 1 new site. Hope to get it up and running soon ;)

Thats about it id say. Theres probably more that i left out, but oh well ROFL

[layoutcentral]

Woah! Old thread! Time to bring it back ;)

Okay, I started out on myspace. (I was only 10 when I started) My older friends wanted some layouts, and I was the ONLY one that had Photoshop. so i found some brush sites, made some layouts, etc. Pretty soon I decided to start a different account and make layouts, edit pictures for people, etc. I called it "Pic Me Layouts" (cheesy name, i know). I was getting friend requests everyday, things started getting good. After a few months, I decided it was time for a break so I quit everything for over a year and a half and focused on school and my personal life. I continued making things for my friends and all though. After everything settled, I decided I'd start up again with design so I started another myspace with another designer and we called ourself "Walk the Line Contests" (my partner wanted to run contests :P ). Pretty soon, the name got annoying so we changed to "Hollywood". After a few months, we stopped talking and quit working on our "site". One day, I was on ******* ******* (cant say the name, i promised the guy i wouldnt say anything :P) and I was talking with the owner and he gave me an oppurtunity for a subdomain. (hollywood.xlayoutsx.com <- i still run it). I got it and started working immediatly. I was kind of dumb when it came to all the big HTML codes and all. Found a partner to work with me, and we started adding stuff immediatly. I got bored with it and left it sit for about 1-2 months (BIG mistake). Finally got motivated to go back and work, designed a layout for it, etc etc. Gradually, I started getting more visitors. I used to be excited with 20 UV's a day. My host put me on his site, then my hits more than tripled and went up each month. Blekk, now im here now. I've ran a few other sites and crap. And I'm currently working on 1 new site. Hope to get it up and running soon ;)

Thats about it id say. Theres probably more that i left out, but oh well ROFL


WOW Dale, you have a long story, interesting too... well here's my boring bio lol!


I started on a forum called magickal kingdom when I was 9 making requests. Then I started a freewebs account. Which was a dud, after that I started a myspace account for layouts & found a partner. My partner lost interest quickly so I just started making my friends myspace layouts & wanted to sell so I bought a domain ******-***.net I wanted to find a forum to sell them at so I did a google search & found MSP! I tried to sell my layouts but couldn't so then I figured out layouts weren't my thing glitters were. So I gave away my domain & I am yet to buy/start new website. :)

[urheart]

I'm an artist, I LOVE to draw...my favorite medium is pastels.

However, I started web designing back in '97 at the age of eleven. (10 years ago). I would hang out on websites like kidscom.com (http://kidscom.com) and I think the other one was called freezone.com (http://freezone.com). I got into downloading a bunch of DOS games like Cosmos, Commander Keen, etc. but then I got bored with all that and I wanted to move on to making websites. I asked my dad how to do this because I thought he new everything.

Although he didn't know how to design websites, he knew the tools I needed to make one. Our internet host gave free webspace (the url was long and I still remember it http://members.iglou.com/~esmith/gmichelle.htm). He got me Netscape Composer (cringe), showed me where to get clip art, and how to send all the files through an FTP Server. I caught onto it really fast, but then I came across the website of a girl named Jayme, who made her own graphics for her website. I just HAD to learn how to do that. So I went to my dad again and he downloaded Paintshop Pro 1.0 for me....lol. I then got the big head and thought that my url sucked, so I tried to be like everyone else and hop on the geocities bandwagon, those were where the "in" people were back then...lol. You could choose where you wanted your address like at Sunset Park (and I forget all the other names). I remember being able to type in four numbers under any section, and it would lead to a personal website of some young designer like me....mostly girls.

Then of course altern.nu came out, and it was cooler to have a shorter domain name, so I went there. It was altern.nu/sparkles to be exact. Then girls started getting their own domain names and started hosting other girls. The ones who couldn't get a domain, like me, would kill to be hosted. LOL. Websites like delish.net and gemz.net. Can you believe when the owner of the old gemz.net decided to take on the concept of hosting a select few, she was called a "COPYCAT"? But look at how popular this trend is now.

Anyway, I stayed faithful to Paint Shop Pro until sometime around 2002 when I finally switched over to Photoshop 5 or 6 I think? It was kind of confusing at first, but I caught onto it very quickly. Somewhere in between all this, I started scanning my artwork onto the computer and merging/turning it into some of my graphics.

I'm also majoring in Graphic Design right now.

[SlickEddie]

I don't have a graphic bone in my body...so I have oompa loompa minions that slave away for me. And I pay them peanuts...literally.

[layoutcentral]

I don't have a graphic bone in my body...so I have oompa loompa minions that slave away for me. I pay them peanuts...literally.


lol :rolleyes: funny funny funny!

[urheart]

Anybody remember in the 90's when people would have website names like Todd's Planet or Ashley's World? And when it was cool to use Comic Sans as the default font, in bigger letters? LOL.

[digitalxguilt]

My web design/graphic design story is weird to me because I never thought I'd end up doing this. And I think that if I hadnt of got with Chris things might have been totally different.

I started on those yahoo pages, where you like pick a theme and add your personal info. I remember having a hello kitty one. It gave me a bit of a buzz and wanted something to keep my mind stimulated.

I only had paint to work with so what I could do was limited.

I got together with my boyfriend in may 2002 and he opened my eyes to a whole new world. He gave me a subdomain on his site and some hosting, gave me a copy of dreamweaver and helped me along with any problems I had.

Then he bought me vixxie.co.uk for my birthday and I put every effort I could into it, by this time he'd given me a copy of ps7. and I continued to work on my site.

Then I left college, I didnt have a job then and wanted to do something constructive with my time so I decided that I wanted to make a graphics site. I told Chris and he gave me £30 of his disability allowance (aww what a sweetie) and said I could do what I wanted with it. I bought dazzlingrainbows.co.uk and began to use a free trial of psp7..which is where chris opened my eyes to the world of 'cracking' programs.

I worked on DR for about a year then decided I wanted to make a new site with someone. in the end I made one with a friend called cosmicproductionz.co.uk we worked on it for 2 years up until last summer - we sort of grew apart and abandoned it.

A year into having CP I bought prettybaymare.net to use a blog domain and stuff it full of pages and pictures about my horse. so after we stopped working on CP I went back to blogging and doing personal sites. Chris (my boyf) started working for stagecoach and gave me a copy of ps cs

I knew PBM was going to expire in a few months so I was wondering what I'd do and if I'd get another domain, so until I decided what to do I kept working on PBM.

For 2 weeks I was sat thinking of domain names I liked and last september I bought Digital Guilt and began working on it. I had planned to just blog from the day I bought it but I somehow ended up making glitters and other bits. I used PBM to forward to DG to try and boost my traffic because I knew a few people had it bookmarked.

I think around about christmas PBM died and I kept working on DG.

Then a few weeks ago Charlotte asked me if I wanted to make a myspace graphic site with her and on a whim I said yeah. And thats where I am now.

I'm 22 and its been a fun journey here from way back then :P I'm looking forward to seeing if I keep this stuff up in the next 5 years..

Chris keeps giving me copies of photoshop, and I did ask him for a copy of cs3 extended which he gave me but since my pc has decided to be a *****, Ive packed trying to use it in and stuck to my loyal companion psp8 *hugs* where would I be without it and my lovely animation shop.

I can't believe that I have never had a site on a free server. And that Ive gone from having Chris help me with my html/php problems, to HIM asking ME for help.

I'm not a very 'artsy' sorta person offline, I cant draw, paint or anything like that so I have no idea why I can be creative on the pc.

Writing all that, makes me miss those little sites that inspired me to get started in graphics. like doll paradise, dollie passion, and there was one called dollie shoppe. I miss the old skool glitters.. you know those horrible flakey fills that made the graphic look flat. and the time when blinkies were the IN thing. and when gurlpowerr and eve were popular.. can you tell I was into dolls rofl

[Panic!]

I started about 3 years ago as a hobby. Opened my first site on my fave band and ever since then i've loved web and graphic design. I've not kept a site for longer than a month since having one for 2 years - I'm more into graphic design than websites at the moment :)

[IcE-PrInCeSs]

hmm i started march 2006.

i moved to the capital city to my parrents and here we have internet and computer :cool: (i'm working on computer since i was 8 but that's other story :P ) so i started with surfing and playing games.

one day i had to make a page for a mirc script and that was my beggining. i started loving sites and i decided to make one mine - named funny-site ROFL
after a month or 2 i saw dolliecrave and i was totally in love with this site. i knew that one day i will have my own with stuff like this.

i started working on one named sweet land and i didn't do anything - i didn't even open it - it was with html tables (ugly ones) and i still visit it when i have time :biggrin: after that hmm i think july 2006 i started working on my first real site - icy sweet.tk but i got bored very quickly and september 2006 i made my parrents buy me hosting and domain :cool: - my second site crystal--love.com.

december 2006 i won domain in kville (forum) so icy-seet.tk became icy-sweet.com i worked a lot and i make it ... normal site :biggrin:

March 2007 i opened crystal--love.com but 1-2 months i became totally bored of these 2 sites and now i'm thinking of closing them and making one new but this will happen if i make my parrents buy me new domain and if i don't get bored of it too ROFL


excuse my english - i hope if there is anyone who read this understand what i wanna say :)

[Dale]

excuse my english - i hope if there is anyone who read this understand what i wanna say

its fine :biggrin: i read and 100% understand :P great story btw :) everyone has great stories :D

[Jordan]

Believe it or not, I started off on matmice.com, the ****tiest free host ever. Hell, I was in primary school so you can't blame me lmao. Totally made this cute as page on Ralph Wiggum from the simpsons. I think it was called Ralph Wiggum Rocks HAHAHA and it totally got popular on matmice. I met Jenna and Sophie on matmice and I still talk to them and even meet up with them. I'm totally seeing Jenna next week, flying up north to see her :) shes amazinn.
Yeah anyway. I moved to freewebs and learnt iframes and all that, and i was gettin like 100 u/v a day which excited me LOL. Matt (yeah matt on here lmao) totally hosted me for the first time, but i got sick of that site so i closed it and I had about 50 different blog sites hosted everywhere. Even steph from shimmeringgraphix hosted me at one point :x totally got sick of moving around, so I opened a personal/graphics site smash3d. I got a domain for my birthday and totally set up smash3d.net and I still have that domain today but I'm reworking it into a resource site. It's actually pretty well known in the personal site world I guess, but I'm not into that anymore so yeah whatever.
Right now I have dollcharm.com open which is moderately popular, keeps going in and out haha. I'm redoing smash3d.net and a few other projects including a few with Selena should be coming out soon enough :)