Any advice for an out of touch designer? What platforms/languages should I relearn to get back in the game?

Hi everyone,

First time posting, and I was hoping to get some advice!

I've been a designer since high school, I have a Bachelor's Degree, and now I am working in the field. However, in the last... 5 years I've become a bit more outdated with web design, and been more focused on graphic design, mostly due to the fact that every full time job I've landed is focused on print work (Business Cards, Brochures, etc). I'm finding this to be a dead end as a career path, as there's little there to improve or challenge me as a designer. I want to get back into web design game, so that my skills aren't completely depreciated.

My current skill set:

• I can use Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash (for animation), Premiere, Dreamweaver, InDesign, and most of the Adobe Creative Suite.

• I can manually code HTML/CSS in notepad without the use of any development software. However, I'm not up to date on HTML5 or responsive design. Most of the stuff I used to web design in was cut and sliced in photoshop, and then aligned with tables. (I'm told this is out of date, and I need to learn how to use div tags.)

• I know how to work jquery, xml, xhtml, javascript scripts, and other server side forms, and know enough to edit them for my needs.

• I've created custom WordPress layouts in the past, and created some eCommerce websites as well, however, this was without the knowledge of PHP.

My questions:

• What is absolutely essential for me to learn and be employable in a web design capacity? Even to use as a launching point to learn more? HTML5 and CSS3 seem like a given. However I'm seeing many blank templates out there (Boilerplate, etc), and that is frankly just confusing me as to what the best practice is.

• From most job postings, I'm noticing that a level of web development would also help me in improving myself. However, which language would be the most useful from the HTML/CSS I already know? I'm aware of Code Academy and Lynda.com, so I want to make sure that I'm investing what little time I have on a skill that allow me the most flexibility in terms of projects/employment.

I plan on using my new skills to add to my portfolio, and create some sample websites. However, if you have any other advice or resources that I have missed, then it would be greatly appreciated!

Epic visual tool

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