Unfortunately I am from Europe so I will have to take a pass on your workshop. I like the idea of finding a good list of introductory texts by looking at colleg

Unfortunately I am from Europe so I will have to take a pass on your workshop. I like the idea of finding a good list of introductory texts by looking at college courses and will definitely check that out. I am aware that practice is going to be a key ingredient in getting a solid base, but knowing where to begin is often half the battle. Obviously with something as timeless as design, there are a lot of classics out there, but with emerging markets such as netbooks and mobile devices, some new approaches may have merit. From your and other peoples' comments so far, a good starting point seems to be to dig into some of the classic literature (pretty obvious in hindsight heh). That should start taking care of my theoretical knowledge. Apart from that, I think your suggestion of just doing layout and design on paper is really great. That will enable me to get a ton of practice without being roadblocked by my lack of experience with graphical tools. I suppose doing quick sketches on paper and then working from there is a pretty standard modus operandi for designers, but for some reason that wasn't obvious to me.