Learn More About Graphic Design
Interested in a career in graphic design? We have the workshops, classes, and certificate programs to help you get started or expand your skillset.
For those looking to get into graphic design, you’ll want to learn the applications designers use, as well as design concepts such as typography, composition, color, etc. Beginners can learn these applications in our classes or certificate programs.
Designers with prior experience (such as print design) who are looking to expand their skills should consider our courses in Visual Design and UX (User Experience) Design.
The core Adobe apps designers commonly use are:
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is the industry-standard photo editing app, but you can do a lot more with it than just manipulate photos. It’s very versatile and used by photographers, designers, videographers, and more to edit photos, create graphics, design websites, and build animated GIFs... just to name a few.
Photoshop is one of the standard apps every graphic designer knows. You can use it to create graphics for many types of uses such as social media, web, emails, video, and print. The graphics can contain photos, text, logos, icons, etc. Photoshop can open and export a wide variety of graphic file formats, so you can use it across many industries.
Photoshop is best known as a photo editor. You can do standard image improvements such as adjusting contrast, brightness, color, sharpness or more advanced things such as moving elements from one background to another, removing unwanted elements, and adding in new elements (like a better face in a group photo). What you can do in Photoshop is only limited by your imagination and your Photoshop skills.
Web Design: Because many designers know Photoshop, they use it when designing websites and web graphics. Adobe has added many web design features in the past few years. While some web and UI designers are now using other apps such as Sketch and Adobe XD, Photoshop is still used by many web designers and will probably continue to be used for quite some time.
Animated GIFs: Animated GIFs are popular on social media, HTML Emails, and more. You can create them with Photoshop or After Effects. Photoshop is easier for create simple animated GIFs. After Effects can create more complex animations (which you can make into animated GIFs), but it’s also a more complex app to learn/use, so it can be overkill for creating some animated GIFs.
Adobe InDesign
From long documents (such as books and magazines), to short documents (such as brochures and business cards), InDesign is great at creating layouts that combine text and graphics. InDesign is ideal for creating designs that will be printed but can also be used for digital output such as eBooks, PDF, and more.
InDesign is the king of long documents. You can import content from authors (Word files, Excel documents, etc.), style it and layout pages. InDesign has many features to help along the way, such as paragraph styles, character styles, object styles, master pages, powerful find/change, tables, footnotes, table of contents, and much more. InDesign can even export eBooks as ePub files, which can be converted into Mobi files for the Amazon Kindle.
InDesign can create small documents such as business cards, brochures, and more. InDesign’s amazing typography features are useful in any design that involves type, whether it's a poster or flyer. From one page to hundreds, InDesign is up to the task.
InDesign has many features that help you create professional PDFs. You can create high-quality PDFs that will be printed, or optimize them for fast download via email or website. You can create PDF forms, or add interactive PDF features (which unfortunately do no work well on most mobile devices).
Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator is the industry-standard vector graphics and illustration app. Designers and illustrators use it to create logos, web graphics, fashion designs, product packaging, and so much more.
Even if you can’t draw things by hand, there’s still a lot of things you can do with Adobe Illustrator. Before we talk about some of the common ways people use Illustrator, let’s quickly cover the difference between vectors and pixels.
Drawing & Illustrations: One way to create a vector drawing/illustration is to draw it by hand and then trace it in Adobe Illustrator. You can also draw directly in Illustrator. Having artistic talent helps, but even if you can’t draw well in real life, you can still use Illustrator’s drawing tools to create things you might never have been able to create by hand.
Logos & Icons: It’s important to create logos as vectors, so they can be used at any size. Creating a logo in Photoshop as pixels would be a mistake because you’d limit the quality and size at which you can use the logo. Icons are used in websites, apps, print, and all types of design. These too are best drawn as vectors so they can be scaled without loss of quality.
Web Graphics & social media: Vector graphics can be used in websites as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Social media graphics often require converting your designs into pixel-based PNG or JPEG files, but it can still be easier to work with vectors during the design process.
Fashion Design: Fashion designers often use Illustrator to create patterns (controlling how art repeats within a pattern), explore color, and to show how patterns look in a dress, shirt, pants, etc.
Product packaging: Designers that create packaging appreciate Illustrator’s precision and many graphic features. Amazing typography, graphic effects, ability to import photos, and many more features let packaging designers create the beautiful packaging material that will be printed and used to sell and protect the products we purchase.
Design Theory & Portfolio Development
Once you’ve learned the graphic design tools, learn design theory and develop a portfolio to show clients and employers. In our Graphic Design Bootcamp, you will produce several portfolio projects, including logos, social media graphics, stationery, book/eBook covers, album covers, event posters, and email announcements. By the end of this class, we hope you’ll have at least five finished pieces for your portfolio. The instructor is available throughout the six classes to give feedback and advice on all projects both during and outside of class.
Here are a few key concepts used in graphic design:
Typography
Type is an important part of all designs. There are many aspects designers can use to control the appearance of type. It's not only choosing the typeface/font, designers can choose the weight (bold, black, light, etc.), style (italic, condensed, etc.), uppercase vs lowercase, line height (leading), and much more. Typography affects how easily something can be read, how quickly a viewer can scan over and get a sense of the content, as well as emotional feelings (serious, playful, happy, sad, etc.).
Color
Color is a powerful tool that designers use to draw the viewer’s attention to certain elements. It’s also used to affect the emotional connection and mood of a design. Color is very important for branding.
Composition
Composition is important for creating layouts that are visually attractive, as well as easy to understand. Composition involves hierarchy (the order of importance), spacing, proximity, balance, alignment, contrast, repetition, and more.
UX Design
A UX designer is a “people person” that focuses on the needs of users to enhance a product (website, app, etc). Rather than designing graphics, UX designers conduct user research, create and test ideas with prototypes, and do user testing to see how things perform. They communicate these insights to visual designers and developers.
User experience research takes many forums. UX designers observe customers interacting with a product and conduct interviews to understand their needs. UX designers also use stealth research methods like the A/B testing to test out different experiences to see how they perform in the real world, allowing them to see which perform best.
The apps UX designers typically use are:
Sketch
Sketch is a Mac-only app that many UX designers use to create designs and prototypes which they can test on users and show clients and developers how something will work. Sketch is often paired with InVision (using it’s Craft plugin) to create the prototypes.
You can buy Sketch for $99 which includes 1 year of updates and Sketch Cloud. After that, you can renew the license for $69/year if you want updates and access to Sketch Cloud.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a newer Adobe app that is very similar to Sketch. Unlike Sketch though, it works on Mac and PC. It has an integrated approach that enables you to do all design work in a single app: wireframes, prototypes, visual designs, etc.
You can get XD for free (with some limitations), as a single app for $9.99/month, or as part of the Creative Cloud.
UI (User Interface) & Visual Design
Visual or UI designers work with UX designers to design visuals for websites, apps, and more. They determine the colors, typography, and appearance based on insights gained from the UX design process. Visual designers typically use Sketch (Mac only), Adobe XD, or Photoshop to create their designs.
Visual designers typically work in these apps:
Sketch
Sketch is a Mac-only app that many web designers are using, and more people every day are switching to it. Not only can you create your designs (for website, apps, etc.), but you can even turn them into working prototypes to show clients and do user testing with.
You can buy Sketch for $99 which includes 1 year of updates and Sketch Cloud. After that, you can renew the license for $69/year if you want updates and access to Sketch Cloud.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a newer Adobe app that is very similar to Sketch. It’s an easy to use app that enables you to design and prototype your ideas. Unlike Sketch though, it works on Mac and PC. It’s a relatively new app and is still developing rapidly.
You can get XD for free (with some limitations), as a single app for $9.99/month, or as part of the Creative Cloud.
Photoshop
Photoshop has been around the longest and is used by many web designers. It is a photo editor with web design features added on, so some web designers are turning to other apps such as Sketch and Adobe XD which were created solely for the purpose of visual and UX design.
You can get Photoshop for $9.99/month, or as part of the Creative Cloud.