School of Visual Concepts

Quickly and effectively identify design flaws with the tools you acquire in this fifteen-hour intermediate class. Participants learn to utilize this safety net and ensure that consumers respond favorably to website and app features. Specific topics include an end-to-end usability study overview, test plan selection, testing methods, results communication, and special testing variations.

Bring your artistic vision to life in this four-hour course. Using Furuta wood type scans, instruction combines vintage technologies, such as printing and letterpressing, with advanced design tools, such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Specific topics include merging letterpress assets into your digital workflow, building a letterpress library, modifying the designs for digitization, and digital masking techniques.

Transfer your ideas from your mind’s eye to your sketch pad in this twelve-hour UX Sketching course. Rough sketching is an excellent way for digital designers to better manage their workflow. Specific topics include the link between sketching and the UX process, common sketching techniques, storyboard creation, communication through whiteboard sketches, and interdisciplinary tips.

Learn to create powerful brochures, magazines, catalogues, and other printed materials in this fifteen-hour Adobe InDesign overview. Participants also use their newfound skills on digital canvasses, largely by importing copy and art from other sources. Specific topics include document setup, image and graph preparation, typography, pagination, numbering, layout design, and exporting.

Take your Adobe After Effects skills to the next level in this fifteen-hour intermediate course. Add motion effects to images, graphics, and copy to create eye-catching documents which add value to the reader. Through a combination of live instruction, hands-on learning, and class discussions, participants cover areas like keyframing, compositing, masking, mattes, kinetic typography, and GIF animation.

Rediscover the lost art of hand lettering for designers in this beginner-level, six-hour course. Participants learn to design lettering based on their imaginations instead of the available fonts and typefaces, so they can emotionally connect with users. Specific topics include calligraphy, sign-painting, and other pre-digital arts, examining letterforms, creating an alphabet, using tools, project planning, and some experimental techniques.

Learn to truly think outside the box and consider various perspectives in this three-hour beginner design thinking course. Leading organizations like Google, GE, Stanford, Apple, Harvard, and MIT have all embraced this way of thinking. Students examine real-world problems in areas like the design thought process, data user analysis, rapid and effective brainstorming, making evidence-based decisions instead of jumping to conclusions, resource utilization, and overcoming common objections to design thinking.

Create and manage fully accessible apps and websites in this three-hour beginner course. Most people agree digital accessibility is important, yet most people also lack the skills to make such designs a reality. So, this course covers practical design areas, such as how accessibility barriers affect people with disabilities, available accessibility tools, applicable legal and technical standards, like the Americans with Disabilities Act and WCAG Accessibility Guidelines, common issues, and building an inclusive design practice.

This three-hour beginner class focuses on the commercial aspects of a freelance developing, strategizing, writing, or designing business. You may have the creative tools you need, but you have bills to pay. In addition to general concepts like developing a business plan, participants learn some nuts and bolts like developing prospect lists, advertising through social media and artistic portfolios, building a solid profitability plan, compensation methods, and managing timesheets, RFPs, contracts, and other such documents.

Learn to create designs that are as diverse as your users in this 4.5-hour beginner course. Participants become intimately familiar with Design Swarm, a platform which empowers people of different backgrounds and skill levels to collaborate on a given project. Specific topics include overcoming obstacles, watching for business opportunities, enhancing creativity by serving a wide swath of users, and incorporating the latest inclusive design techniques.