Tips for the high school student wanting to go into design

1) Go to college.
Okay, this is obvious. But to expand more on that idea...

1a) Liberal Arts College
I recommend a liberal arts school, a school where you won't do just art, but have to take gen ed classes too. Being well-rounded for a designer is a good thing.

1b) Look at the current college students work
See if the college you are considering does good design work. These are usually haniging in the hallway in the school.

1c) More than one design teacher
Find a school that has more than one teacher for design. I only had one teacher, and while she was alright, I think I would have benefited from more than one teacher...which relates to the next point...

2) If you can, find design classes outside of college...before and after college.
I attended the pre-college design classes at the art institute of chicago. I highly recommend them. It gave me a leg up on the other beginning design students when i got to college.

3) Subscribe to design magazines
Print, Communication Arts. If they can't afford it, go to a library that has them. This is a very important thing to me. When I was a student, most of the other students never looked at design magazines. And their work suffered. It was like they were trying to reinvent the wheel. They felt that they were cheating if they looked design magazines for ideas. They felt the need to prove themselves as designers on their own. I say, "ppppph! hogwash!" Go ahead, check out other's designs, take some funky ideas and mold them to your situation.

4) Get the programs
Find a friend who has the design programs and steal them from this person. (Okay, maybe scratch this idea. this is wrong and illegal.)

5) Join the yearbook
Get a feel for doing alot of design and help layout your high school's yearbook.

6) Join the school newspaper.
By joining either the yearbook or the newspaper, you gain valuable knowledge before you even hit college! Like what's a pica, a column inch, a dummy, leading, tracking, kerning, etc.

7) Do other design stuff for your school

7a) Organized events
that happen in high school (homecoming, dances, etc), there is a plethora of opportunities to design stuff...tshirts, posters, handouts, flyers, even websites

7b) Sports groups
You can even develop logos for the different sports groups or organizations. (along with the other stuff mentioned in 7a)

7c) Once word gets out that you can do this stuff, people will be knocking down your door for your services. Then develop your own little design company. Okay, maybe that last idea was a bit extreme.

8) Get great designers to come into your high school and talk about design

9) Join:
Students In Design, http://www.ac4d.org

10) Form a design club in high school.

11) Learn to type
Oh man, typing without looking at the keys is essential.

12) web resources for school newspaper
News Design for Students
http://www.ndfs.org/

Visual Newspaper Directory
http://www.ndfs.org/directory/visual/default.htm

Society for News Design
http://www.snd.org/

Society of Publication Designers
http://www.spd.org

13) Answers to questions that beginning designers have:
http://www.careerconnex.com.my/career/cpath/guidance/art&desi.html
http://www.robinsdesign.com/b_starting_out.html (EXCELLENT PAGE!)

14) Go to http://www.spudart.org
haha, just kidding. that's my website.

15) You don't have to anal and over-worked
When i was a student i heard alot of working designers say, "you have to anal, you must have attention to detail, you will be over-worked." While for some designers this may be true, but for me this is totally not true. I don't get over-worked. (well, i was over-worked at my previous job, but not ALL designers are overworked). I am not anal. I'm not the greatest proofreader. But what I do have is passion. That's the key. See next point.

16) Passion
I have found passion makes a great difference in design. If you really like what you're doing, you'll totally succeed. NOW this passion may not be apparent right away. When I first started design, I didn't really like it. In college, I blew off my design classes to focus on my art. Therefore, I was a crappy designer. Starting out in design can be tricky because there is so much to learn. It can be intimidating. But if you stick with it, the tools will become a part of you. And if you look at enough good design, you'll learn the visual/design tricks to make something ultra-funky-cool. And then the passion kicks in.

17) Have fun
Just have fun with your design stuff. You've got plenty of time to learn at this age.