Graphic Design Certificate

What is Noble Desktop’s Graphic Design Certificate and how does it prepare you for a career in design? Dan Rodney, the Director of Graphic Design at Noble Desktop, sat down with Anna Marshbanks Kelley to discuss the Graphic Design Certificate.

Anna: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your experience with graphic design? 

Dan: I started out getting a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design, where I learned traditional print design. Back then, Photoshop would take literally half an hour to zoom in once on an image. If you wanted to work on a decent-sized file, you had to buy a $10,000 computer. The field has changed considerably since I got started, but there are still the same core concepts of typography, color, and composition.

I’ve taught here for over 20 years. Originally, I worked a block away at a design studio. I started teaching design part-time at night with Noble. This turned into a full-time teaching position, and eventually, I became a director. I also designed Noble Desktop’s logo and created our custom e-book publishing system. 

Anna: What is the Graphic Design Certificate at Noble Desktop?

Dan: Our Graphic Design Certificate is a design program with training in print and digital design. It includes classes in the major Adobe design apps and more general design theory, all with the goal of helping students build a portfolio of work.

Anna: Who is the target audience for this program?

Dan: We have many different types of people taking our Graphic Design Certificate. Some people are career switchers coming from a completely separate line of work. Others are working in a similar career, like marketing, and want to learn about designing graphics to broaden their current skill sets.

Some people come into our program with more of an eye for design than others, but it’s ultimately a learnable skill. Students can learn the best design practices. I think anyone who really wants to be a designer, who has the willingness to be creative and experiment—that drive will lead you to become a good designer. You have to be curious, try things out, and see what works.

Anna: What are career options available in graphic design?

Dan: It’s common to think graphic design is only about traditional prints. In reality, everyone who does some type of visual design is a type of graphic designer. Visual designers, motion graphics designers, UI designers, and web designers all rely on graphic design apps and concepts. There are visual design components to UX design work, so you’ll find a little overlap with graphic design skills, but UX design is more concerned with how things work as opposed to how they look.

The kinds of work you do for any given design job will depend on the company’s philosophy and organizational structure. However, all design careers involve planning, creativity, and an understanding of aesthetics. What’s important to know if you’re just getting into the field is that there’s always a need for designers.

Anna: What will students learn in this program?

Dan: For the Graphic Design Certificate, you start off by learning the three main design apps that graphic designers use: InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. 

InDesign is a print-centric program. You can use it to make anything from a business card to a thousand-page book, and it’s excellent for typography and managing multi-page documents. Photoshop is a photo editing application. You can use it to color correct, retouch your images, and apply filters. In addition to being great for photography and photo retouching, it’s a good design tool for making graphics for websites, emails, social media, and other digital environments. Illustrator is for creating vector graphics. It gives you the ability to work with mathematically perfect lines instead of pixels. Logo design and icon design are primarily done in Illustrator, and a lot of fashion designers and web designers use Illustrator’s pattern-making tools.

Once you know those tools, we go on to cover graphic design concepts. The Graphic Design Bootcamp we teach as part of the Graphic Design Certificate is a class where you learn about typography, color, composition, and what makes good graphic design. You learn theory, and you also get practice implementing that theory using the design apps you’ve learned. For example, there’s a logo project, which is actually a lot harder than people expect.

As you complete these projects, you also build a portfolio. The idea is that you can show the portfolio to other people to get either freelance work or a full-time job.

Anna: How does the Graphic Design Certificate prepare students for career opportunities in graphic design?

Dan: Design jobs are typically portfolio-driven. Employers will want to see your body of work before hiring you. The goal of the Graphic Design Certificate is to give you the knowledge to build a portfolio and then use that to start a career. Like our other certificates, it is focused on job-oriented skills. 

Your first design job is always the hardest one to get, but once you start the work, it’s often much easier to get the next job. A great part of going into design is that you don’t have to start out working full-time. You can do freelance projects to build experience and pull in extra income. Then you can look for a full-time job or eventually gain enough clients to be a full-time freelancer.

Anna: What are the benefits of learning graphic design at Noble Desktop with this program? 

Dan: Our classes are all live and come with individual attention, similar to what you’ll have in an in-person course. For each of the four classes you take as part of the Graphic Design Certificate, you get one free retake within a year. This benefit is extremely unique, and it’s helpful for people who learn best by completing a task multiple times.

Another benefit that is unique to Noble Desktop: we write our own training material and offer customized workbooks to students. For all the classes in the Graphic Design Certificate, you’ll get a custom-made workbook with step-by-step exercises. If you forget how to do something, you can go back to the book, check the steps, and practice.

A newer initiative for this program is individualized mentoring sessions with the instructor. Students receive four one-on-one mentoring sessions where they can receive additional feedback for their portfolio, including for work they’re doing outside of class. If they have questions about concepts they’re not understanding, we can go more in-depth with them. They can also talk about their resume or LinkedIn profile and get advice on applying to jobs.

Anna: How does it compare to similar programs at Noble, like the UI Design Certificate, the Graphic Design Bootcamp, and the UI Design Bootcamp? 

Dan: The UI Design Certificate is a digital design program. With the UI Design Certificate, you’ll learn Photoshop and Illustrator since those are useful for retouching and creating digital graphics of all different types. You don’t learn InDesign since InDesign is a print-focused program, which is more appropriate for a traditional and well-rounded program like the Graphic Design Certificate.

Also, the Graphic Design Certificate doesn’t get into web design. The UI Design Certificate does touch on designing websites, and it includes classes in Figma.

The Graphic Design Bootcamp is one class that reviews general design concepts. You’ll learn about designing logos, magazine ads, and other graphics, some of which can be print. You can take this as part of the Graphic Design Certificate, or as a standalone course.

The UI Design Bootcamp is also a general design class, but it focuses purely on digital design. So there you’ll learn what makes a good website, and you’ll learn about color, typography, and layout from a web design perspective.

Anna: How are the classroom and learning environment? 

Dan: You can do the Graphic Design Certificate live online or in-person in New York City. If you’re doing it live online, you can screen share to your instructor’s computer and chat with them through your microphone or phone. We go through planned lessons, but you can ask questions as they come up and interact with the instructor. 

Most of the app-specific classes in this program don’t come with homework. You’re in a hands-on environment where you learn, complete exercises, and practice in the class itself. When you’re in the Graphic Design Bootcamp classes, that’s going to require some outside work. We assign projects and you’ll have time to complete those projects outside of class. Then, the teacher will review your projects and give suggestions on how to improve your design and other things to think about. There’s a lot of learning that happens in the critiquing process.

Anna: What’s a piece of advice you would give students beginning the Graphic Design Certificate?

Dan: When people get started, they may be overwhelmed by the number of things they can do. One piece of advice I like to give students is: don’t worry about everything you can do. Pick the kind of design that is most interesting to you and go down that route. Once you learn that area of design, you can always add to it.