Graphics?

[artdutra04]

I do much of my graphics work in Macromedia Fireworks MX for web applications and Illustrator (if I'm working on my Mac) for print applications, and any photo editing in Photoshop CS2. Here's a few of the sites I've designed, with almost all of the graphics work done in Fireworks MX:

http://www.team228.org/ (I designed the everything (graphics and PHP/MySQL database-driven backend) from scratch.)
http://www.platths.com/ (I designed only the graphics, not the ASP backend.)
http://www.connvex.org/ (I designed the everything from scratch.)

I avoid Flash [as part of the main design/navigation/framework] of any website like the plague. Not only will it cause a lot of problems with things like search engines and text readers for blind people, but it usually wastes more bandwidth than it's worth. Good uses of Flash might be embedded Flash video players, or an interactive presentation about your team on a dedicated page. Bad uses of Flash include links/navigation and "useless" animation fluff.

(Useless animation just distracts people from the content of your website, which is far more important than bright and flashy websites.)

[Jon Jack]

We NEVER use Photoshop for graphics... mainly it's not supposed to be used for graphics. We use Illustrator for all of our graphics. What's nice about Illustrator is it creates vector artwork, which is artwork that can be blown up to any size without distortion. Another thing that is nice about vector artwork is that it can be used to control laser cutters, vinyl cutters and a load of other devices. We can make a set of decals for our robot in Illustrator, give them to the printshop we use and within a couple of hours have three or four sets ready to go. We can also layout a design on a piece of plastic, give it to that same printshop and have them engrave the design right on the plastic from the Illustrator file.

As for web design, just about every student on our team knows Dreamweaver by the end of the first semester of their freshman year. Naturally, the students are going to use what is familiar to them so Dreamweaver is our web design software of choice.