Looking to improve your typography skills? Below, we have compiled a list of the 7 best typography courses that are available online. This list includes both free and paid typography tutorials that will teach you everything you need to know to create beautiful graphic designs – whether your goal is to be a highly-skilled creative professional, or just to use typography in as another ‘ribbon to your bow’.
But first, let’s answer an important question – what is typography?
Typography discusses a repeated system of letters. It is concerned about how the letters appear together in a system and the style and appearance of printed material. Words are prevalent in all facets of graphic design design. They are the best means of communication – they tell stories and convey long and complicated ideas. As a result, it is beneficial for both graphic designers and other creative professionals to learn about typography.
To understand typography properly, you don’t need years of training or experience. Instead, you can gather all the skills you need to create beautiful words digitally through online classes. In this article, I’ve gathered the best online typography classes. They are suitable for a wide range of levels, budgets, and time frames. So, whether you’re someone looking to make a full-time career as an graphic designer, or a small business owner who is wanting to cut costs and create their own graphic designs for marketing campaigns, we guarantee that there will be a lettering class for you.
1. Introduction to Typography (Coursera)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: Approx. 8h
- Cost: Enroll for free
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: 115,209
- Course rating: 4.8/5 (out of 4,600 ratings)
Typography is rich in rules, conventions and terminology. To the untrained eye, it can appear overwhelming and complicated, but once it is understood it is an exciting space for invention and expression.
Offered by the California Institute of the Arts (CATS), which has an international reputation as the leading college of visual arts in the United States, this course is one of the best out there for lettering. Instructed by Anther Kiley, you will cover a huge amount. You will review the terminology and measuring system used to describe type, exploring how typefaces tell stories and understanding the historic evolution, how to conduct a peer-reviewed typesetting exercise and how to design a full-scale typographic poster.
By the end of this glass, you should be able to improve your lettering sills and get tangible career benefits from this course!
2. Graphic Design Foundations: Typography (LinkedIn Learning)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: Approx. 2.5h
- Cost: Free
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: 68,178
- Course rating: N/A
Ina Saltz is an author, professor and photographer who knows how important good typography is. She recognizes what a tremendous power it can add to your design and your message.
In this course, you will learn all about good typographic practices, so that you can develop an “eye” for type and understand how to effectively use it. You will learn about type classification (e.g., serif vs. sans serif, display type vs. text type), how type is measured, sized, organized, and how different spacing and alignment can affect your design. You will also learn how to use kerning, tracking, leading, line length and the history of typography.
By the end of this free LinkedIn learning course, you should feel confident with understanding the principles of legibility, readability and compatibility, and how they should be considered when you’re selecting and designing with type.
3. Learning Graphic Design: Set Perfect Text (LinkedIn Learning)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: Approx. 1h
- Cost: $32.99
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: 28,517
- Course rating: N/A
Instructed by John McWade, a designer and teacher who creates ground-breaking courses about graphic designs courses for LinkedIn, this class will teach you all the basics about typography for graphic design.
John McWade knows that when text (or type) is the star of your graphic design, you need to ensure it is set perfectly. In this course, John will walk you through choosing the right typeface and styling type. You will learn about indents, sizing, spacing, line length, punctuation and much more. By the end of this course, you will know how to see type correctly so that you can adjust the letterforms so they are balanced and beautiful.
4. Great Graphic Design: Create Emotional, Gripping Typographic Art (Skillshare)
- Level: Intermediate
- Completion time: 1h 13m
- Cost: 14-day free trial
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 5,516
- Course rating: N/A
Sophia Yeshi is an illustrator and graphic designer who wants to help people create designs that are bold, dynamic and demand attention. This class is constructive, charming and breaks down the fundamentals of graphic design. This course is crash course for basic typographic design principles, such as balance and rhythm. You will also get to take a behind-the-scenes look into Sophia’s inspiration, an exploration into how to develop palettes that express emotion, and you’ll learn several tricks and tips for fun and interesting Adobe Illustrator effects.
After completing this class, you will have a brand new set of tools for your creative expression. Just like Sophia, you too should be able to great bold, unapologetic, colorful and gorgeous graphic design with typography.
5. Typography for Designers & Developers – “Don’t Suck at Design” (Udemy)
- Level: Intermediate
- Completion time: 8h 38m
- Cost: $15.99
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 5,244
- Course rating: 4.5/5 (out of 611 ratings)
Taught by Muhammad Pervaiz, a UI UX designer, freelancer and web developer, this course is designed to help you create beautiful designs for web and Mobile applications. In this course you will learn how to use line-height and letter spacing effectively. As this course has a huge focus on web design, you will also learn how to use Photoshop, how to code for lettering, how to use Bootstrap and how to balance your design using LEGO Blocks method.
After completing this course, you should be able to dramatically improve your boring designs with beautiful typography!
6. Typography for Complete Beginners | Tutorial (Udemy)
- Level: Beginner
- Completion time: 46m
- Cost: $13.99
- Certification: Yes
- Number of people who have completed the course: 7
- Course rating: 5/5 (out of 611 ratings)
In this typography tutorial, complete beginners will learn the basic, and advanced, knowledge of typography. In this typography online class you will learn about the history of script and how lead typesetting worked in earlier times. Furthermore, you will also cover readability of texts, measuring font sizes, spaces and widths, font technologies, real and false capitals, and much more.
If you’re a complete newbie wanting to learn more about typography for a career as a graphic designer, illustrator or to enhance your creative skill set for other roles, this course is for you.
7. Lettering for Designers: One Drop Cap Letterform at a Time (Skillshare)
- Level: Intermediate
- Completion time: 1h 41m
- Cost: 14-day free trial
- Certification: No
- Number of people who have completed the course: 35,931
- Course rating: N/A
Jessica Hische, a letterer and illustrator, knows that the foundation of all lettering is to understand how to create just one beautiful letter. In this popular Skillshare lettering class, you will learn how to create all the letters in the alphabet by starting with the simplest possible project: making a single letter!
Throughout this short course, you’ll learn how to sketch your ideas to create a solid foundation for your design. You’ll go over how to digitize your work in illustrator, how to identify what makes a letter look organic and replicate it in your own work, and how to critique your work to get those solid finishing touchings. After finishing this class, you’ll have a full set of tools to create perfect letters that look amazing!
Conclusion
So, there you have it… the 7 best typography classes online.
There are a huge variety of typography tutorials available. Some of them are quick and cost effective. Others are more expensive and take more time but they cover typography in more depth.
All of the above typography courses are excellent. They are the best of the best. Each is taught by an experienced and dedicated teacher and they all have satisfied and happy customers.
So, which course you decide to take depends on you experience, funds and spare time. Have you ever used a computer to create graphic design? Or have you got years of experience with drawing cool graphics but just want to nail your typography skills? Do you have a huge amount of money to spend on your skill development? Do you have a lot of spare time, or are you just looking for a quick, but effective, skill top up?