Graphic Design Skills
About Graphic Design
Graphic design is the craft of creating visual content that communicates an idea or a message. It covers a huge range of activities, from simple visuals, such as a business logo, to complexed page layouts on a website.
Whatever the activity, graphic designers have one goal: to attract viewers using images, color and typography. There are many elements of graphic design that are used in conjunction or opposition with each other to create visually appealing designs, these elements include: form, line, shape, size space and texture. Other graphic design principles include balance, emphasis, movement, proportion and rhythm.
Why should you learn about graphic design?
Graphic design is much more than just creating pretty designs. Often, good graphical design is an important part in the backbone of a business’s success. Graphic designers are used by companies to promote and sell products through advertising. They are also used by websites to convey complicated information or by start-up businesses to develop a strong identity.
However, despite the huge importance of graphic design, when we think of graphic designers, we often think of an exhaustive creative sat hunched over their laptop working tirelessly to produce work for their demanding clients. And whilst, there are definitely some graphic designers out there who work like this, it doesn’t mean this is the only way to work in graphic design!
Learning the fundamentals of graphic design can be incredibly useful for all kinds of careers outside of the typical graphic designer role. If you are creative and artistic then you may want to consider taking a graphic design course to ‘add another ribbon to your bow’. Careers other than a graphic designer that graphic design skills will be incredibly useful for include:
- Advertising art directors
- Animator
- Artist
- Creative director
- Fashion designer
- Game developer
- Illustrator
- Interior designer
- Marketing manager
- Medical illustrator
- Web designer
How to improve your graphic design skills
There are numerous ways to improve your graphic design skill. On the surface, graphic design appears quite complexed and, as a result, you may assume that you need a degree to become a successful graphic designer. Some people do attend University and achieve a bachelor’s degree graphic design. They spend three or four years mastering the basics of design and important techniques. They will learn about colour theory, typography and the many other elements that help graphic designers to produce eye-catching images!
However, although a degree can teach you a lot about the subject, it is not essential to achieve a graphic design degree in order to gather many graphic design skills. There are plenty of fantastic online courses, both for free and for a fee, that can teach you everything you need to know to develop excellent graphic design skills.
Online learning can offer you the opportunity to gather tuition from some of the best experts in the field. What better way is there to learn about adobe illustration than from an adobe guru themselves? Plus, when you learn online, you can learn in your own time, at your own pace and you can pick a course suitable to your budget.
Graphic design is a huge field and there are many different aspects that can be explored. There is no right or wrong place to begin. You may decide that you want to focus more on animation and, therefore, you should consider online animation classes. Or you might want to really nail your typography or 3D design skills and should focus on taking classes specific to this.
Online Graphic Design Courses
If you’re wanting to dive deeper into your creative career and take the plunge into progressing your graphic design skills, then we’ve got you covered!
We’ve taken all the different graphic design sub-skills and spent a lot of time researching the best online courses available. Your next step is to decide which course (or courses) suits you best!