If Nick Lenz Advertized...

K.A. Rutledge

Gary,

Thanks again. As for advice, sure I've got plenty. But as I don't know what part of the HTML/design picture is not yet "clicking" for you, I'm not sure if it will be relevant. But...

First, just as art students spend a great deal of time copying great works, so should designers and HTML coders. Since the visual design is among the more important elements of our goal (along with functionality), I suggest finding designs that appeal to you and then slogg your way through to figuring out one or two ways to reproduce them (for practice). You can do it based on what you already know and/or you can look at the actual design's code and see how that designer did it. Spending time looking at a website's code is time well spent.

Next, the web design community is about the most open and free information-rich out there. Spend lots of time on the many tutorial sites learning specific operations, plans of attack, methodologies, scripts, etc... You can learn a wealth of valuable information by just browsing through these sites and taking what is freely offered. Commit yourself to learning one new "trick" or operation a week and you'll vastly improve your work over the span of 2 months. Start with www.alistapart.com/

Also, learn to rely heavily on CSS. Your design work become SOOOOO much simpler when your visual representation is in the style sheet rather than in physical markup (like complex tables, etc...). Use physical markup as little as possible (read: easy as possible) and use the very simple and intuitive CSS tools to apply the bulk of the visually represented structure. Few things can help your quality and ease of work as good CSS.

Lastly, understand that all the coding chops in the world are nearly useless if you've not got a developed or intuitive artistic sense of design. Design is the aim. Code chops are just the tools. If you don't know how to design a house, knowing how to lay perfect bricks and assemble joists is all for naught. Make sure that you know exactly what you're trying to build (visually) and know that it is good (doing its visual job) and WHY it is good. Make sure you understand the universals of design - what lines, shapes, forms, colors, proportions, etc... have what specific connotations and how they may best be used in this specific medium (web).

Oh, and whatever you do, buy and read Jeffrey Zeldman's "Designing with Web Standards." It's the most helpful book out there for budding web designers.

Anyway, not sure any of this helps, but here it is - free of charge. ;-) Best o luck!

Kind regards,
Andy Rutledge
www.andyrutledge.com/
zone 8, Texas