Best Online Graphic Design Courses and Certification Programs
What is something on which the internet doesn’t deliver information? Rarely anything. Internet is a boon for humanity and it is the only medium that contains gazillions of data and resources on every subject. Tons of users, across the globe, access the internet every second through various channels to gather their valuable and necessary information. There are various amenities that the internet offers, right from enabling users to enrich knowledge from direct search, watch live and recorded videos on various issues, listen to audios on different topics, maintain communication globally, promote business worldwide, send data to one another, and many more. But enabling users to offer real-time online courses is one of the spanking and appreciable features of the internet.
Currently, umpteen educational institutions exist that offer real-time online courses. The upside of e-learning is that it offers a wide range of short courses and a learner can pick his desired courses as per his passion. Graphic design is one of the on-demand subjects that are taught online from different parts of the world. Under the subject, various courses are offered and they are divided into a number of modules. The courses offered are so diverse that the students can pick and choose courses based on their career building objectives. Students can attend classes online in due time from their homes, schools, and offices at ease.
Let’s dilate upon some of the graphic design online courses that stood out from their competitors.
Udemy: Introduction to Graphic Design
Established in 2009, Udemy is an e-learning platform created to assist people to pick up new skills and refine them. A number of courses on graphic design are available in Udemy that are taught with a unique style and informative approach. The platform has gained popularity due to its rating-based approach to teaching. The courses in Udemy are instructed via video-based lectures and they are charged as per the quality of the contracted lecturers, the length of the lecture, as well as the topic. The prices of Udemy courses are pretty reasonable. On top of that, you can get an offer for various courses with the application of the right Udemy promo code. However, Udemy offers free graphic design courses as well.
If you are looking to learn about the fundamentals of graphic design in a short period of time, Introduction to graphic design, created by Sean Berg is the ideal choice for you. It’s a free course offered by Udemy and consists of video presentations and audio lectures. The course will impart you the basic concepts of design, 5 principles of design elements as well as the method of detecting design elements in natural conditions. The course predominantly targets the amateurs in the field of graphic design. If you are one of them and looking forward to receive a precious certificate after the course completion, don’t let this opportunity of accomplishing the course slip from your hand.
Alison Online: Visual and Graphic Design
Alison online is a splendid site for both newbie and accomplished graphic designers to refine their knowledge and knacks. The site’s Visual and Graphic Design course will offer you a free certificate upon your completion of the course. You may wonder this course is conducive only for beginners and not for working graphic designers as they already have skills and experience. But this course will even benefit the working graphic designers when they will switch their jobs for more superior jobs or for freelancing projects. This certificate will buttress their credentials in their career.
Alison online was founded by Mike Feerick, offers classes free of charge but they are not credited. It means even if you receive a certificate on the completion of diploma, your potential employer will not be able to recognize it. A platform for free certified learning, the site not only offers courses on graphics but also on many other different subjects.
Coursera: Graphic Design Specialization
Coursera is another online learning platform that offers courses from some of the top and accredited universities such as Stanford and Yale. The method of Coursera’s teaching is phenomenal as the instructors from the top universities teach the students through pre-recorded video-based lectures on a variety of topics. The platform provides the advantage of auto-grading, peer-review, and interactive discussion programs, making a healthy experience for the learners. It rewards electronic certificate to the learners at the end of each course at the expense of payment. However, it rewards course materials free of charge if the objective of the learner is notch up knowledge.
Graphic design specialization is a series of courses offered by Coursera that encompasses 4 courses to aid you master a specific skill. It gives you a holistic knowledge of graphic design. It kicks in with the basic concepts of graphic design and then imparts you about the introduction to typography. Thereafter, it touches the introduction of image masking and finally, sheds light on everything in context based on the history of graphic design. The course will last for 6 months to finish and the materials of the course are accessible complimentarily. However, if you wish your effort to be marked and receive a certificate for it, you have to pay for it.
Kadenze: Introduction to Graphic Design History:
Kadenze is another massive e-learning platform targeted towards art, music, and creative technology. The instruction medium of the site, primarily, is based on video. It offers courses in both scheduled and adaptive mode. In scheduled mode, the students follow specific dates for starting and ending a course, submitting assignments, and getting new lecture content. On the contrary, adaptive mode allows more flexibility of following their own pace in the case of commencing and ending course as opposed to following any schedule. On top of that, the website also offers free as well as fee-based membership.
Anyone having passion for graphic design must be enthusiastic about the history of graphic design. We should know how the design fundamentals came into existence. Introduction to Graphic Design History course from Maryland Institute College of Art will walk you through the history of graphic design. The course consists of 7 sessions with each session spanning for 6 hours of work. The course commences with the origin of text and graphic design. Among the topics that are taught under this course, typography, photomontage, avant-garde, and modernism are remarkable.
Canva Design School: Canva Graphics Design for Entrepreneurs: Design 11 Projects
If you are looking to create designs swiftly and easily without using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and any other software, Canva is the ideal and the best choice. It is an online tool having a section called Canva Design School that provides resources for all types of graphic designers including beginners, intermediate, and advanced graphic designers.
Jeremy Deighan and Phil Ebiner, the accomplished and experienced makers of this course, will instruct you Canva from the get-go. By completing this course, you will be able to create 11 graphic design projects. This course will throw light on the method of using Canva in order to create blog banners, social media visuals, Facebook advertisements, Twitter posts, and Youtube thumbnail. The course will cover all these tasks in an elaborate manner in a span of 3.5 hours. On top of that, the course curriculum is updated on a regular basis.
Skillshare Design Courses: Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design
Skillshare is another online education platform that focuses on offering short and in-depth graphic design courses to potential students. Some of the courses available in this platform are free while others are offered in exchange for paid subscription. Skillshare offers courses that are easily accessible and the classes are instructed by thousands of instructors. The classes are taken on various topics such as Photoshop, Illustrator, color theory, logo design, many more.
The focus of this course is on the fundamental principles of graphic design. You may be an amateur or an accomplished graphic design, this course will be handy for you to complete. The class length of the course is 35 minutes and within this short span, it will walk you through the 5 core principles of graphic design. There will be one more class conducted by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Philips that will guide you on how to apply these 5 core principles in practical graphic design, creative design, banner design, log design, marketing, and even photography. The course also contains 36 minutes of video content to help you pick up things easily and convincingly. With the completion of this course, you can even examine the quality and effectiveness of your work.
Envato Tuts+ Illustration and Graphic Design Courses:
Teach Yourself Graphic Design: A Self-Study Course Outline
If you are reflecting to take course in an e-learning site for graphic design, Envato can be a cracking one to meet your demands. The website is thoroughly littered with many graphic design courses. The courses of Envato embody various tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Rhino, Cinema 4D, and so on. The website can be branded as one of the exhaustive sites encompassing all the concepts that you need to master. It has more than 990 courses installed within the system.
Sean Hodge, the author of this course lays out all the stuff required to create a self-study course pertaining to graphic design as opposed to the traditional methods. In traditional method, a course is conducted by an instructor taking advantage of various audio and video materials. Unlike this method, you can master the graphic design skills by going through the books and online resources collected by the author. The author sheds light on the principles and theory of graphic design, method of refining your intuition and flow, and the way you can plan your graphic design career.
Skilledup:
This is another fantastic website that offers various conducive graphic design materials at an affordable price to the passionate students. It offers a plethora of courses that are instructed on a subscription basis at a rate of 20$. Apart from that, the website offers many complimentary courses as well. Among various courses the platform offers, Visual and Graphic Design course is worth mentioning as it imparts fundamental starter pack for the newbies. It renders an excellent edge for those looking to take up a career in graphic design.
Zee Institute of Creative Art:
This is one of the excellent graphic design institute for online learning as the institute regulators have done thorough scanning of each and every course. The institute boasts of offering almost all types of graphic design courses including visual effects, 3D animation and motion graphics, web design, digital photography, multimedia, etc. The mentors hired in this institution also have excellent profile and credentials. They possess massive experience in the field of graphic design, thus instructing the students’ quality education.
Creative Pro:
When it comes to online design magazine, Creative Pro is second to none. It has a fantastic how-tos section containing videos and articles for seasoned graphic designers. The platform is a handy resource for graphic designers to refine their knowledge and knack. Not only is the platform beneficial for experienced graphic designers but also for newbies as they can merge these resources with other resources to have the taste of well-rounded education on graphic design.
ADMEC Multimedia Institute:
ADMEC is a graphic design institute that offers both certificate and graphic design courses online. Certificate course covers a wide range of topics and lasts for 2-4 months. Contrariwise, the diploma course takes little more than the certificate course and can be exhausted within 6-8 months. The online version of the institute is no different from the real program as it provides real-time course maintaining the same quality in visual content and real-time teaching. They don’t teach from pre-recorded materials to create better student experience. Identical to the classroom, the students get the opportunity to communicate with the instructors in real-time and enrich their knowledge.
Next-G Education:
The virtual courses offered by Next-G education is identical to the real program offering real-time experience for the students. The course duration of the institute, normally, varies from 1 month to a year. Among the courses Next-G Education offers, Advanced Graphic Design Expert Course, Graphic Expert Premium Course, Graphic Expert Standard Course, Graphic Design Expert Course, Adobe Illustrator Course, Adobe InDesign Course, Adobe Photoshop Course, and CorelDraw Course are worth mentioning. The online courses in this platform are so diverse that the students can cherrypick courses for their skill development.
Apart from the above-listed graphic design online courses, there are many other graphic design courses offered by the same institutes. Each course lasts depending on the content and materials of the course. These courses will help you hone your creative and technical skills. Based on passion and the career objective, you can pick and choose a graphic design course.
Why Join Online Graphic Design Courses
When it comes to branding and marketing products and services, the gravity of graphic design is exorbitant. As the demand for graphic design is mounting, the opportunity for job seekers is creeping up. Many job-seekers struggling to get job across the world, this is a golden opportunity for them to pick up things pertaining to graphic design. The specialization in graphic design will let them find jobs easily in different multinational companies. They can even freelance if they wish to be their own bosses. The best and the most efficient way to master graphic design, nowadays, is to learn it online enrolling in a course depending on your area of choice. Let’s walk you through some of the conducive advantages you can get by accomplishing online graphic design course.
Flexibility in Continuing Regular Activities: No matter whether you are a student or a job-holder, online courses will allow you to continue your daily activities along with doing your course. The upside of online courses is that you don’t have to attend the classroom physically. Instead, you can stay at your home and virtually connect with the class. You can pick your class schedule at your ease to keep other pivotal tasks seamless. Whether teaching mode is live, pre-recorded video, or audio-based, you can learn the lesson without any hassle. With the successful enrolment in an online graphic design institute, you can know about the latest design trends and polish your knack.
A means of Saving Money: Unlike doing course in brick and mortar institution, online course is cost-effective. In the case of a traditional on-campus course, you have to travel regularly from your home which will cost you considerably. Along with that, the institution will surcharge you for offering courses as they have additional costs of classroom, electricity, water, and other related stuff. In addition, you also have to snap up books and some of them cost really high. In the case of online course, you won’t encounter these hassles as there is no traveling cost, surcharge, and book purchase cost. You can get all the necessary resources downloading online saving tons of money.
Direct Interaction: Getting enrolled in online or virtual courses will allow you to have a one-to-one conversation with your mentors. In a traditional classroom, a particular course is instructed to a group of 8-10 students with one instructor. This often doesn’t allow the instructor to interact with all the students identically. As a result, many students fluff to pick up lessons satisfactorily, thereby having doubts on various topics. On the contrary, online course allows students to communicate with the mentors on a one-on-one basis and students get special treatments and attention from the mentors. Many a time, they can also have sessions with live chat and video call facilities to ask their queries directly to the teachers in order to clear their doubts and misconceptions.
A Faster Way to Complete Course: Completing courses through mainstream classroom is a lengthy process. Most of the courses last for a number of months and a big portion of this period go in vain due to irrelevant discussions in classes and other unwanted occurrences. Unlike this traditional system, online courses run for a week or for a few weeks. This is because students can connect to the online classes at their ease and get the opportunity to make use of every second, thus operating at a rapid pace. With the swift completion of courses online, not only do they advance to their rivals but also get the scope of refining other skills.
Refinement of Computer Skills: A computer-savvy knows how to outsmart his competitors. In this age of technology, having the know-how of computer is pivotal. When it comes to the point of graphic design, the more a student will possess computer skills, the better designer he will be. Right from handcrafting to knowing keyboard shortcuts, graphic designers should have skills and profound knowledge on them. While doing online courses in graphic design, students get the full opportunity to work manually, thereby knowing the minute details of computer hardware and software.
Additional Program and Mentor Options: Another massive benefit of online learning is the availability of a wide range of courses on different platforms. In the conventional method of doing courses, many a time, you struggle to find the desired courses and mentors. In certain institutes, you may ace in getting prospective courses and mentors but they may be out of your reach. But by signing up on an online platform, you can pick and choose your graphic design courses as per your passion and requirements. Aside from that, you can also cherrypick your instructors without having the hassle of compromising.
If you are looking to build a career in graphic design, choosing an online platform to polish your skill is not only an intellectual decision but also fruitful. One of the massive benefits of e-learning is that you can watch live video lectures or pre-recorded videos as many as times as you wish. In addition, this method of learning will allow you to access everything required to master graphic design.
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