Design Software!

Any of CS would be great to know. Really research what you want to do as a designer and find out about those products would be best. Like for me I know Illustrator which I use to design book pages. Just depends on what you exactly want to do. Hope this helps!

Hey, try “After Effects”, from Adobe. They teach this one in my university! It does great effects on videos.

Photoshop, Indesign, and Illustrator are the must-knows for graphic design. Though some designers use QuarkXpress instead of Indesign.

I’ve only dabbled in interactive design, but you’ll need to know Flash very well, and After Effects and Premiere Pro would be good to know (though they’re a huge pain to learn!).

It’s good to start experimenting with different design programs. I know it might seem intimidating at first when you’re not used to the interface of each program. Just keep playing around until you get the hang of it.

You should know that every design program has their own purposes. InDesign, illustrator, and Photoshop all deals with images, but they are used differently. InDesign is mostly used for making layouts and publishing printed items (the same goes for QuarkXpress). Illustrator is a vector based program, and photoshop is a pixel based program. It basically means they handle images differently. Those 3 softwares are basically the most essential tools you need when dealing with graphics.

Adobe After Effects and 3D Programs such as Autodesk Maya are really good if you want to create motion graphics. They can generate really cool moving images in 3D space. I’d say learn After Effects first because because you can use it for more general editing.

Good luck!

Adobe Illustrator is best for vectoring!