Other than going to college for design, be sure to learn as much as you can from people that do it for a living, as well as countless online resources. Join design forums and discuss techniques and read tutorials.
Colleges are fantastic for learning design theory. The classes I took helped me understand tons about what works well and what doesn't and there are still many classes I'd like to take, finances permitting. However, they WILL teach you wrong technique and they do not explore functions properly, at least not in the beginner levels.
If you want to throw a deck on KS, I can give you some things that I did wrong that I would change if I could do them again:
1. Do not rush anything. Jump into KS with a completed design that is at least 95% the way you want it to be.
2. Finalize pricing with the USPCC.
3. Be ready to have an insane work schedule. You'll be working 8-15 hours a day, seven days a week, for several months. Then you'll have a period of time where you have NOTHING to do for an entire month or two. If you're actually making bank, that's not that bad at all. Although I am a bad example of turning a profit on my work, and that's where tip #2 comes into play.
4. You will have haters. The most vocal people about your projects will be the haters. Maybe not to the public, and maybe not even for you, but for me the negative critique resonates the most. Take constructive negative critique and use it. You will be unstoppable. Take unconstuctive critique, or misinformed critique, and ignore it. These two forms of critique come from the bowels of the Internet. Now your work may actually be terrible, the absolute most amazing thing to ever happen to art, or (more likely) average/good/very good. However, even if you pump out a design that a third grader could create, unconstructive criticism is still useless. You will never be short on constructive critique though, especially on these forums.
5. You will need at least $20,000 to print with USPCC right now. Even more since they recently sky-rocketed their prices. Create your pledge levels accordingly.