Hey guys, I've been interested in design for a long time, and like to think of it as a possible career path. I've been looking around this site for a while now, especially at the Design Contests.

Here is where my problem occours. I see a contest i'd like to enter, and scribble down some designs, then open up Photoshop and try and make the scribbles into actual designs. But the problem is, I find it very hard to make custom shapes if I need them. Same goes for things like fonts as well, I always find myself resorting to the fonts I have in Photoshop, rather than the ones in my head because I can't figure out how to make them.

My question is how do I over come this, is there other software I could use to make things like this easier? Perhaps a drawing tablet?

Basically, I guess I just want to now how most people go about designing something, especially something with fonts and shapes/images they have produced. Please help!

I see myself more as a coder than a designer, and when I come up with designs, and want to use elaborate fonts, I scour the many free font sites on the net.

Same here. I'm a coder, so I'm in the same boat. Best thing we can do is learn how to design, but in the meantime, partner with an actual designer. (It's one of my mantras actually - "let the designers design, let the coders code".)

Try illustrator and vector based graphics. Sometimes when I can't do what i want in PS I jump over there and it's much easier to accomplish.

PS Elements is a great way into learning PS (full version)

Hey dude, i think your problem is quite common, its not always easy to make what you visualise a reality, but there are some tips that i think can help you.

As far as the making custom shapes goes, the best tool you can use is the Pen tool in either Photoshop or Illustrator, this is one of the most powerful aspects of these programs and once you have grasped that you can do pretty much anything. If you dont already have an understanding of the pen tool i would suggest taking a look at this tutorial: http://www.elated.com/articles/paths-and-the-pen-tool/

As for your fonts, its all about knowing what fonts you want, take time to look through various websites, and rather than downloading loads of random fonts you dont like, make the effort to pick out and download fonts that you know you like and know you will use, its pointless downloading fonts you dont have a use for. Below are a few good font download sites:

http://www.dafont.com/
http://www.abstractfonts.com/

You can also combine different shapes (e.g. two rectangles combined will make a cross) and then use the pen tool to modify those shapes. I do most of my graphics work in Fireworks and it's really easy to select/combine/edit shapes once you get the hang of how the paths and points work.

If your intrested in entering the design contest, more often than not you will be required to produce vector graphics. Adobe Illustrator would be more suited to you, and it is alot easier to creat custom shapes.