Can you share some of the best resources you've found for learning?
Every once in awhile, I'll look through them and try to emulate something that is within my reach.
Here's a few recent ones:
http://dustincurtis.com/press_on.html
http://nerdcommunications.com/
http://www.thecleanestline.com/
I started learning Photoshop & Illustrator about a week ago. Youtube is great for tutorials on specific things such as tool usage, colors.
Just found this one for Illustrator: http://www.ndesign-studio.com/tutorials
Fonts are also quite important to catch people's eye. I'm dabbling in the free stuff now, but I think TypeKit is also quite nice.