Graphic design skills are important even for professionals not in design fields. Business professionals creating reports, teachers creating instructional materials, and scientists sharing their discoveries, all could benefit from basic graphic design skills.
Photo by Theme Photos on UnsplashTake advantage of free courses to help you develop your skills for whatever career path you are on.
Basic Courses
Understanding the basics of graphic design will help make better presentations, show off data and make it memorable, and even make a splash on a school, college, or business report.
Photo by Jess Bailey on UnsplashHere are some quick and dirty courses on the basics:
Canva Design School has a variety of graphic design courses great for people already using Canva like educators and non-profits. Try:
Graphic Design Basics which provides an overview of graphic design regardless of software used.
Alison is a platform with free courses including design like:
Alison's Graphic Design Course which quickly covers topics of history, technique, design elements, and more.
Udemy courses aren't always free but these two are:
Graphic Design Workshop for Beginners is great for people with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Graphic Design: Top 6 Fundamental Rules to Master Design includes practice.
Youtube — Okay. It's not a course per se, but there is great content here to explore and tutorials for specific projects from beginner to advanced. Check out this playlist:
Beginning Graphic Design covering basic design elements and tips for their use.
In-Depth Courses
If you are interested in diving deeper into graphic design, or looking at specific types of graphic design try Coursera. They offer college courses that can last as little as a few weeks and have hours of content that you can take at a pace that suits you.
A few of the courses they offer are:
Fundamentals of Graphic Design by CalArts is part of a 4-course specialization (if you want) and includes a variety of design projects.
Graphic Design Elements for Non-Designers by the University of Colorado Boulder includes an exploration of the basics and a design project.
Fundamentals of Graphic Design: Build Your Own Logo Design is a project-based course where you'll design a logo in Inkscape.
Building Digital Media using Graphic Design in PowerPoint is a project-based course which allows you to work in PowerPoint for free to complete the project.
and many more.
Coursera courses are for anyone from beginners to advanced. Some are specifically project based, while others include varying amounts of course work, and many courses are available in languages other than English.
Free Graphic Design Software
Practice is the best way to learn new skills from any course. And they best way to practice free courses is with free software, right?
Try out these free open-source software options:
LibreOffice — This software includes document writing, spreadsheets, and slide presentation components comparable to the popular paid versions.
GIMP — This free software is an alternative to other programs that allow you to do image and photo manipulation and editing.
Quiz
You're preparing a presentation for school or work and you want the visuals to "pop." What graphic design resources would you consider using? Select all that apply.
Take Action
Improving your graphic design skills doesn't take great expense. Free courses and open-source software can provide you all you need to practice and gain the graphic design skills needed to make a great impression.
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