Discover the creative process behind graphic design as you learn to use Adobe Creative Cloud tools to craft layouts, brand visuals, and marketing materials.
Learn how to retouch and color correct photos, combine images, and create graphics in Photoshop. This course covers the basic and intermediate features of Photoshop such as color/contrast, photo retouching, layers, masks, filters, and saving files for web/video/print.
Learn how to design professional page layouts with text & graphics in Adobe InDesign. This course covers styling, importing, packaging, and advanced techniques like styles, master pages, and tables. Perfect for creating books, magazines, and ads.
Learn how to draw and edit vector graphics using Adobe Illustrator. This course covers the basics and advanced features, including the Pen tool, effects, layers, masks, and more. Perfect for creating logos, icons, and packaging.
Learn to create compelling video content with Adobe After Effects. This course covers the basics of animation, text effects, and file integration needed to start creating impressive visual content from scratch. Get hands-on experience with real-world projects taught by an experienced instructor.
Learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to create professionally edited videos in this comprehensive class. From importing and organizing footage to advanced editing techniques like multi-cam editing and green screen removal, this course will equip you with the skills to create compelling video content.
Leverage the power of cutting-edge AI tools and features in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other Adobe apps in this hands-on class.
Learn the basics of Adobe Creative Cloud apps like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects in this hands-on bootcamp. Gain practical skills and become proficient in using these industry-standard applications.
Master the Adobe Creative Cloud and get hands-on training in top applications like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects. Become an expert in designing for print, web, and motion graphics with project-based training.
Master Photoshop from the ground up and prepare for the Adobe Certified Professional exam with expert-led training, hands-on projects, and personalized tutoring. This comprehensive program is ideal for aspiring designers, photographers, and creative professionals looking to earn industry-recognized certification.
Advance your layout and design expertise while preparing for the Adobe Certified Professional exam in this hands-on InDesign Certification Program. Through expert-led classes, personalized tutoring, and real-world projects, you'll gain the skills and confidence to create polished magazines, brochures, books, and more.
Build professional-level Illustrator skills and earn your Adobe Certified Professional credential through hands-on classes, private tutoring, and real-world projects. This certification program covers everything from vector drawing to logo design, giving you the tools to succeed on the exam.
Develop high-impact motion graphics and visual effects while preparing for the Adobe After Effects Certification exam through hands-on classes and private tutoring. This in-depth program covers beginner to advanced techniques, equipping you with the skills and credentials to stand out in animation and video production.
Master the art of video editing and earn your Adobe Premiere Pro certification through expert-led training and one-on-one tutoring. This comprehensive program prepares you for the certification exam while helping you build professional-level editing skills.
Begin your journey as a professional graphic designer by learning the essential skills and tools used by industry experts. Gain hands-on experience in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, and create a stunning portfolio to showcase your talent to potential employers or clients.
Become a well-rounded Digital Designer by learning essential Adobe applications, Figma for UI design, and key design concepts and theory. Develop a comprehensive understanding of design concepts, processes, and workflows, create great-looking modern designs, and showcase them in a portfolio.
Gain essential skills in UI design for websites and mobile apps, including composition, typography, color, and attention to interactivity. Develop a portfolio showcasing your design projects and earn a NY State-approved certificate in UI Design.
In a day and age when both print media and digital interfaces are widely accessible, it’s estimated that one person sees hundreds of images per day just through exposure to advertising. Outside of advertising, we encounter more images as we shop online, consume entertainment, and browse through social media. Present in all of these sources, graphic design harnesses images as a means of artistic visual communication. For instance, a simple logo can express brand values and product purpose in a matter of seconds. Additionally, a visually appealing design can entice you to buy a product before you’ve even processed what it is.
Using elements like line, text, shape, and color, Graphic Designers produce impactful images that are typically intended for a mass consumer audience. Although graphic design is also present in traditional art venues such as museums and galleries, this art form is more commonly encountered in marketing, branding, print media, and digital interfaces. In addition to brand designs like product packaging, advertising, and logos, graphic design plays an important role in the creation of magazines, video games, apps, stickers, and more.
Historically, graphic designs were produced using physical media such as paint or ink, but are now predominantly digital. In addition to appearing frequently in digital formats, today’s graphic designs are typically produced using digital tools such as Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. However, knowing how to use technical tools like these is only part of becoming a great Graphic Designer, as the best designs also incorporate knowledge of design principles and accessibility.
As a major element in contemporary brand identities and marketing campaigns, there is a consistent demand for graphic design in many different industries. However, you don’t need to be a professional Graphic Designer to reap the rewards of this skill set. Graphic design is endlessly applicable, with as many personal uses as there are professional ones. Because people’s emotions are roused more easily by images than words, you can leverage graphic design as a tool to tell stories, forward causes that you care about, and connect with others.
As a creativity-sparking skill set, graphic design also makes a fabulous hobby for the artistically inclined. In fact, despite its association with marketing, everything we know about graphic design today all hearkens back to its original inception as a form of artistic expression. Today, graphic design still has a huge presence in the art world. You can spot it in the street artwork of Banksy, hit album covers like Taylor Swift’s Red, and the immersive user interfaces of games like Cyberpunk.
For those who practice graphic design as a form of personal enrichment, the medium can be a salve for mental health. Just like other creative endeavors, graphic design can lift self-esteem, reduce stress, and provide a sense of fulfillment. Additionally, graphic design has the potential to connect artists to a larger community of artists, resulting in fewer loneliness.
The diversity of graphic design classes available means that not every class will cover the same graphic design skills, but in general, graphic design classes can help you master design software and principles. While some classes only cover one tool (like Photoshop), others offer sweeping coverage of many graphic design skills. By and large, shorter classes cover less ground and are more amateur-friendly, while longer bootcamps and certificates offer comprehensive training suitable for a graphic design career.
The best image-editing app by far, Photoshop is widely used by photographers and Digital Marketers to edit photos. The tool can be used to erase undesirable elements from a frame, add new components, or adjust existing ones. Additionally, Photoshop is capable of performing more minute calibrations to features like color, brightness, contrast, and sharpness. Today, the app is so closely associated with photo manipulation that the word, “Photoshop, ” is now used in popular speech to discuss all image alteration even if they’re accomplished with a different tool.
Because Photoshop’s pixel-based graphics don’t allow images to be resized larger without loss of quality, it’s limited when it comes to generating new images. To fill this hole, Adobe created Illustrator, which uses vector graphics to fabricate infinitely resizable images from nothing. A logo designed with Illustrator can easily be integrated into a small app icon while at the same time being blown up for display on business signage. While Photoshop’s tools are designed for transforming preexisting images, Illustrator’s package includes a wider array of sketching and painting features. Consequently, the tool has gained immense popularity among Artists, Illustrators, Graphic Designers, and Fashion Designers.
The tool of choice in the print and publishing industry, InDesign enables users to arrange text and images together in harmonious page layouts. This tool is ideal for composing print projects such as books, magazines, advertisements, posters, greeting cards, and infographics. While InDesign isn’t typically used to create or edit images, it allows for photos and artwork to be imported from Photoshop, Illustrator, and other design apps. In addition to pushing the print industry forward, InDesign is also relevant to industries like user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, web design, and digital marketing.
While just about anyone can churn out a project using Adobe Creative Cloud apps, it takes more to produce truly breathtaking designs. Having a firm grasp of design principles and how to apply them in different situations is key to creating designs that move people. Among the design concepts you’ll explore in a graphic design class are color theory, composition, white space, line, repetition, texture, movement, and typography.
It may not seem obvious at first, but people skills play a major role in graphic design. Understanding how people react to various visual stimuli helps designers not only generate evocative designs but also ensures that designs are accessible and communicate messages as intended. Additionally, graphic design professionals need teamwork and communication skills to work effectively with other designers and clients. Shorter graphic design classes may touch on these skills briefly (if at all), but bootcamps and certificate courses can help students hone communication skills through experiential assignments.
Basic graphic design skills are easy to get the hang of, and may even motivate you to move forward. If you’re nervous about trying graphic design for the first time, it may help to think of your learning journey as an exciting path of discovery. The beginning stages of learning graphic design will be smoother and more fun if you’re not bogged down by perfectionism or fear of failure.
Keep in mind that like many creative skills, graphic design has a highly subjective learning curve, one that’s different for every person. Your unique difficulty level will be impacted by your past experiences along with your future intentions. If you have experience working in other art mediums, graphic design may come more easily to you. Similarly, whether you’re simply learning basic graphic design to fuel a hobby or plan on pursuing a graphic design career will result in two very different learning journeys, the latter being inherently more challenging.
Although graphic design software skills are straightforward, it may take more effort to develop a sense of how and when to apply specific design principles. Likewise, gaining a feel for how people respond to different designs takes time and practice.
Additionally, you may find it challenging to receive feedback on your work. However, learning how to take feedback with grace and use it to create better designs is a skill that often differentiates between great and mediocre Graphic Designers.
If you choose to become a graphic design professional, you may also discover the need to keep on top of design trends and stay up-to-date on new technologies. When you’re just starting, all this knowledge may feel overwhelming, but it gets easier the longer you practice graphic design.
In short, how long you need to study graphic design depends largely on what you plan to do with your graphic design skills. In contrast to some other art forms, basic graphic design skills can be attained very quickly. In just a day, you can start messing around with Photoshop, and the same is true of other graphic design software. However, it can take much longer to master graphic design skills at a professional level. To achieve professional status, you’ll need to practice consistently for several months, if not longer.
The length of your timeline may also be affected by factors like:
Once upon a time, you might have needed to attend a university to learn graphic design, but these days, you can choose from a variety of learning paths. Online and in-person graphic design courses both offer high-quality training experiences but have unique strengths that may make one type of class more likely to meet your needs.
Set in a traditional classroom, in-person graphic design courses come with plenty of opportunities to socialize and get questions answered. In many cases, professional experience will also be included as a part of your training, and you’ll be able to receive feedback face-to-face. These courses demand scheduled time commitments and require a commute.
You can receive online graphic design training in two different formats, the first being live online classes. Sharing many parallels with in-person classes, live online graphic design courses utilize platforms such as Zoom to deliver an interactive training experience, making it possible to talk with instructors and classmates in real-time. In addition to allowing you to participate in live class discussions, live online training makes it possible to gain professional experience from home and is now the number one way to learn graphic design.
In contrast, on-demand training (also sometimes referred to as asynchronous training) prioritizes flexibility over experience and social interaction. These classes don’t usually require many scheduled obligations or deadlines, and provide training in the form of self-study materials. While these courses enable you to learn on your own time, they’re only effective when you can maintain the discipline to keep learning with less accountability.
Thanks to the internet, we have ready access to information, including free learning resources like Noble Desktop’s graphic design seminars. However, relying only on free online resources has several downfalls that you should be aware of before diving in headfirst. This tactic depends on your ability to scavenge the right information from a miscellany of options, and can easily result in massive knowledge gaps that you might not be able to recognize without professional-grade feedback. Free resources can seem like a smart workaround at first, but there’s a lot to be said for curated curricula that include all the skills you’ll need to accomplish your goals. In addition to providing more comprehensive information, paid classes can provide mentored practice and job support.
Due to a large talent pool, graphic design jobs are incredibly competitive in Philadelphia, making it all the more important to learn additional skills that can set you apart from the average Designer. The skills that will best complement your graphic design experience may vary depending on which industries you serve, so it’s useful to consider your long-term career goals when deciding which skills to pursue. If you’d like to start taking on larger design projects in exchange for higher earnings, adding project management to your resume can help you get there. On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time working with tech professionals, you may benefit from learning coding.
To give you some ideas for what to explore next, consider skills like the following:
While it might be tough to find work with just graphic design skills alone, landing a job is much more doable when you combine your graphic design know-how with skills relevant to one of Philadelphia’s top-producing industries. In addition to helping create images for the city’s growing tech industry, graphic design has become an essential part of healthcare, tourism, and publishing.
Together, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and life sciences form the largest employment sector in Philadelphia. In addition to providing patients with health treatments, the city continues to lead America in clinical research by forwarding advancements in cell-gene therapy. Among the 1,200+ life sciences companies situated in the area are GSK, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb AstraZeneca. In addition to working with these companies as a freelance Designer, graphic design specialists can find stable employment through local graphic design agencies like Hero and Think.
Philly’s marketing treats diverse issues, from gene cell therapy to sports, college admissions, manufacturing, retail, and tourism. While concepts for these ads are typically generated by Marketers, visuals and graphics are often created by graphic design professionals working for marketing tech companies and digital marketing agencies. To this day, traditional billboards are the most popular form of marketing in the Philadelphia Designated Market Area (DMA), but the area also includes more digital billboards than other locales in America. Other popular ways to advertise include transit advertising, urban panels, newsstands, and online marketing.
The local hospitality, leisure, and entertainment industry is made up of more than 37,000 businesses and employs nearly 516,000 people, including graphic design professionals who create graphics suitable for marketing, entertainment, and education. Known for Philly Cheesesteaks, water ice, and soft pretzels, Philadelphia not only has a rich cuisine, but a bounty of leisure attractions that make the city a trendy travel destination. In addition to popular historic sites like the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Constitution Center, and the Museum of the American Revolution, Philadelphia hosts numerous annual events, including the July Fourth “Welcome America” celebration. In 2022, Philly saw 24.3 million tourists, an increase of over 15% from the year before and a source of $3.9 billion in local revenue.
While many of Philadelphia’s largest industries are relatively new, the City of Brotherly Love has an age-old history of publishing that began with William Bradford’s printing press and was spurred on by famed editors like Benjamin Franklin and Louis A. Godey. Today, the industry has grown to include over 1,800 workers and dozens of for-profit and nonprofit publishing venues that rely on graphic designers to create visually appealing print media. In 2024, Pennsylvanian book publishers are expected to generate $598,800,000.
Nicknamed the “Athens of America” for its contributions to the arts, Philadelphia is one of the artsiest locations you could pick to start a career in graphic design. Local institutions like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum are regularly in need of graphic designs to enhance and advertise their displays, and that’s not all. Despite the city’s small-town vibes, Philly is bustling with many graphic design projects, from sporting advertisements to theater backdrops. With so many prospective uses for graphic design, the industry has branched into several career paths, each focusing on different projects and emphasizing unique aspects of design.
Some professionals opt to work as Graphic Designers, generating two-dimensional graphics for a variety of purposes. In Philadelphia, Graphic Designers typically raise a salary averaging between $51,000 and $87,000 per year.
Rather than only creating static graphics like traditional Graphic Designers, Digital Designers have a broad skill set that enables them to also produce animations and visual effects. These designers also create concept art and mock-ups for digital products, and typically net between $103,000 and $122,000 in the Philadelphia area.
Digital interface design is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of specialties focused on creating interactive digital platforms such as websites, apps, and games. Web Designer is perhaps the most well-known job title in this group and centers around the visual and technical design portion of website creation. In contrast to web development, web design doesn’t involve much coding and earns a smaller salary of $42,000 to $79,000.
With a focus on creating a positive user experience, UX Designers aim to ensure that digital interfaces are designed for accessibility and functionality. In Philly, these professionals generally collect between $95,000 and $147,000. Meanwhile, Visual Designers (also known as User Interface Designers) emphasize the visual appeal of digital interfaces in exchange for an income of $80,000 to $109,000 per year.
Designers who want to make the largest possible profit with their graphic design skills can add project management skills to their resume to qualify for senior positions such as Design Director or Creative Director. These experienced professionals head out large design projects such as advertising campaigns, magazines, and entertainment media. For their skills, Design Directors based in Philadelphia can expect to net between $107,000 and $160,000 annually.
When it comes to in-person graphic design training, Philadelphia has little to offer, but innovations in technology have made it easy to learn graphic design in an online format. As a result, Philadelphia’s limitations are unlikely to limit your design aspirations. In fact, you’ll have dozens of schools and classes to choose from, making it possible to pursue any goal, whether that’s preparing for a graphic design career or simply exploring beginner basics.
Short graphic design courses are a great option for anyone looking to get beginner training or explore a niche in-depth. If you’re not sure whether you want to pursue graphic design professionally or feel intimidated by learning a new skill, short classes provide a cheaper, lower-stakes environment where you can explore without unnecessary stress. Similarly, if you’re not interested in Photoshop, but want to learn Illustrator, signing up for an Illustrator-only class may be more enjoyable than taking a longer graphic design class.
Leading the world in live online education, Noble Desktop offers professional-grade training that’s not only beginner-friendly but operates in real-time, making it easy to get help whenever you need it. You can get the hang of software basics in less than a day by participating in classes like Illustrator In A Day, which provide hands-on, expert-led training in the top graphic design apps. Alternatively, you can learn everything there is to know about a single graphic design tool by signing up for mentored courses like the Adobe InDesign Bootcamp. If you’re a career-bound Designer who already knows some graphic design and wants to prepare for a certification exam, you can receive thorough software training along with exam practice and test-taking strategies when you join classes such as the Photoshop Certification Program.
Through Ledet Training, novice learners can familiarize themselves with app features in the Adobe Illustrator 101 course. In just a short time, students can get accustomed to features like Artboards, Workspaces, and the Tool Palette. From there, they’ll learn how to use Live Paint, the Pen tool, and pre-set color palettes to create design projects. By the end of the training, students will have the tools to create logos, multi-layered designs, and a variety of visual effects. What’s more, there’s no need to leave Philadelphia let alone the couch to get started thanks to Ledet Training’s live online format.
Want to learn how to make a visual presentation sing? The online Graphic Design for Visual Presentations course at Temple University Continuing Education is a great place to hone these niche design skills. While students in this course learn many of the same concepts as students in other courses, this class focuses on helping learners apply graphic design principles to presentations. With knowledge of typography, color, and accessible page layout, students can then generate presentations that more effectively capture audiences’ attention and communicate information. As a noncredit course, this class is available to those of all backgrounds and doesn’t require students to be accepted as full-time students at Temple University.
Planning on a career in graphic design or UX/UI design? The recommended route for all things career training, bootcamps, and certificate courses is the most efficient way to gain skills, experience, and applied knowledge needed to thrive in graphic design. Additionally, many graphic design bootcamps offer benefits like job support, portfolio workshops, networking, and expert mentorship. While more expensive than shorter classes at the outset, bootcamps are generally cheaper than taking many short classes to learn the same information.
In addition to their shorter courses, Noble Desktop provides graphic design career training that makes it possible to gain skills and hands-on professional experience without leaving home. In the ||CPN548|| course, you’ll build a working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign by engaging with team assignments designed to mimic a real professional environment. As you learn how to apply design concepts like color theory, composition, and typography, you’ll assemble a portfolio that will impress hiring managers and help you score jobs. To help you plan your career and acquire industry know-how, this course also comes fully equipped with one-on-one mentorship sessions and job assistance. For those interested in pursuing related skills, Noble Desktop also offers other career advancement courses, including a Visual Design Certificate and a UX & UI Design Certificate.
Students who are looking for online career training can also learn graphic design along with basic UX/UI design through Shillington School. Their Graphic Design Course offers hands-on training in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Figma (a popular UX/UI design tool). In addition to software skills, students in the course learn key design principles such as composition as they generate a high-quality portfolio. The process of completing portfolio assignments follows a realistic professional timeline, with real-time briefs, deadlines, and studio feedback. In contrast to a college degree program, Shillington School also guarantees one-on-one time with an instructor.
Learners who prefer asynchronous study can earn their Digital Arts Certificate from the Community College of Philadelphia’s Ed2go program. This course is also ideal for students who are interested in learning how to draw, as it includes lessons in drawing with physical mediums and digital tools like Illustrator. Studying at their own speed, students who choose this option will explore a combination of technical skills, theoretical knowledge, and projects designed to stimulate creativity. They’ll have up to a year to explore the course’s full curriculum of content on color, composition, traditional drawing, and magazine illustration. Working with Photoshop and Illustrator, participants practice creating vector illustrations and editing images.
Need technical training without all the extras? ONLC Training Centers has an Adobe ||CPN547|| that’s available online with closed captioning. Best suited for students who already know some Adobe basics, this class gives a thorough overview of Adobe tools, including both app skills and useful resources like Adobe Stock Photos, Adobe My Portfolio, Typekit, and Creative Cloud libraries. From their home or office, participants will create projects using Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. To help organize their projects more effectively, students in the class also receive training in Adobe Bridge.
For another source of one-tool classes, head on over to Certstaffix Training’s course catalog, which includes on-demand and live online classes featuring Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. By signing up for their live online Adobe Illustrator CC (2020) course, you can learn how to use Illustrator and prepare for the Graphic Design and Illustration using Adobe Illustrator Exam in just a short time. The course’s learn-by-doing approach will take you through step-by-step projects designed to familiarize you with all of Illustrator’s key features. You’ll gain a foundation fit for creating artwork, graphics, and logos in a variety of styles. In addition, you’ll receive tips on how to work with generative AI to save time during the design process.
For careers that emphasize graphic design for print and publishing, headTrix, Inc. offers a live online Print Design Certificate. Using InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Adobe Bridge, students complete print-oriented projects. By mastering layout design, Desktop Publishing, web publishing, vector graphic creation, and image editing, students equip themselves with the tools necessary to produce magazines, pamphlets, brochures, and billboards.
If your teen is thinking about a future in graphic design, they don’t have to wait until after high school to start training. With NextGen Bootcamp’s live online Summer ||CPN548||, high schoolers can learn everything they need to succeed in the graphic design industry without the need for an expensive college degree. In addition to mastering Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, your youth will have the chance to build a high-quality portfolio that demonstrates important design concepts and techniques. Additionally, by choosing a teen-oriented program, your teen can receive training in a safe setting surrounded by like-minded peers.
University of the Arts Pre-College (UAP) offers another option for teens to learn via their Graphic Design Saturday School. In contrast to NextGen Bootcamp’s courses, which take place during the summer vacation, UAP’s classes take place on weekends, enabling students who prefer to enjoy free summer months to build career experience during the school year. High school students in this course will get comfortable using Adobe Creative Cloud apps in combination with an array of visual communication skills. In addition, they’ll explore the history of graphic design and its impact on today’s world.
For those who are interested in learning user experience or user interface design, Thinkful has an online UX/UI Design Flex Bootcamp and often hosts professional events in Philadelphia. Like many other remote programs, this course offers training for both full-time and part-time study and includes a variety of flexible payment options. After mastering UX/UI lingo, course students design a real, functional user interface, beginning with user research and working through to prototyping. In addition to learning how to work with Sketch, Figma, and Webflow, students develop soft skills like communication as they practice working with real clients. While this course’s chief focus is UX design, it also provides training in visual design, brand design, and accessibility.
As an additional UX training option, Devmountain offers a ||CPN867|| Bootcamp that emphasizes social learning. Ideal for students who are interested in designing websites and apps, this course covers visual design along with a host of other UX design skills. While prototyping their own digital product, class participants learn information architecture, accessibility, and agile methodologies. To aid in user research and searchability, students will also explore analytics. While the course is only available to Philadelphia students as a live online full-time bootcamp, Devmountain does offer this course part-time and in-person at other locations.
Looking to explore the basics of UX/UI design without digging too deep too fast? General Assembly offers an immersive UX Design Bootcamp that teaches skills like user research, wireframing, usability testing, and prototyping. For students who prefer traditional learning methods, this course offers lecture-style instruction supplemented by a real-world group assignment. While the class is intended for career prep, this course mainly covers beginner-level UX/UI design, making it a suitable option for those looking to learn UX/UI at a slower pace.
If you're looking to provide graphic design training for employees, you can get company-wide corporate and onsite training through Noble Desktop. Depending on the unique needs of your company, you can choose in-person instructor visits, participate in live online training sessions, and receive discounts for groups. In addition, you can offer employees greater independence through team vouchers that empower workers to elect when and where to take their graphic design classes. Get more information about corporate graphic design training by writing a quick message to Noble Desktop.