How to design graphic design

Learning Graphic Design: 9 Easy First Steps for Beginners

The reality is, getting started in graphic design is no easy task.

If you take the right steps to learn graphic design, you can teach yourself graphic design more efficiently and effectively.

So, here’s the deal:

After years of experience teaching graphic design to myself and others, I’ve found the crucial first steps you have to take to become a self-taught graphic designer.

These are the 9 most important first steps you need to take as a beginner to teach yourself graphic design:

Below, I explain in detail how these fundamental steps helped me become a self-taught graphic designer, so you too can get on your way on the right foot.

Step 1: Find Your Motivation

There are different reasons for getting into graphic design. Maybe you want to:

The reasons can be endless, but the objective will still be the same:

Your motivation to learn graphic design has to be powerful enough to keep you focused on the goal, which is to become proficient at graphic design.

This motivating factor must be the fuel that powers your quest to learn.

What motivated me was the fear of not having practical skills as a media studies professor in a very competitive field.

One powerful motivating factor can be earning extra income on the side. The good thing is that you don’t have to work as a graphic designer to earn money as a designer, which can motivate you to study, learn, and practice as much as you can as quickly as possible.

My point is this:

By taking the first steps toward generating a new revenue stream from graphic design, you are actually creating a motivation engine that will sustain your journey into graphic design.

No matter what your motivation is, there is a compelling reason to learn graphic design skills:

We live in an increasingly visual culture.

This means that we value images over words as a society. We are surrounded by visual interfaces. Content is mostly organized around images. Today, images are the most important and powerful form of communication.

In today’s world, those who have skills in visual forms of communication are the most likely to succeed in their respective careers.

So what’s the bottom line:

No matter what your motivation is, at the very least having graphic design skills will give you a professional advantage in a world in which images are the main form of communication.

So go ahead and find the motivation that will power your learning.

10+ Best Graphic Design Tutorials For Beginners — Learn Graphic Design Online

Learn the basics of graphic design and its working with the best graphic design tutorials for beginners in 2021

1. Graphic Design Bootcamp

Learn the essentials of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign while designing real-world projects. In this course, you will learn:

This course is for anyone who is interested in becoming a graphic designer, and especially geared towards total beginners. It’ll show you how to make some of the most popular projects in the industry, like:

It will be using Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator; the industry-standard applications for graphic design.

All project files are included as a free download at the beginning of each section, and you are welcome to use the files however you want, or simply to follow along with the projects as you move through the lessons.

2. Graphic Design Specialization

Make Compelling Design. Learn and apply the principles of graphic design towards a comprehensive branding project.

In this course, you will learn:

This course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape and foundational skills that are common in all areas of graphic design practice.

You will study, name, and measure the characteristics of letterforms. You will consider the pragmatic concerns involved in selecting and combining type.

You will peek into the rich historical, cultural, and aesthetic histories of familiar typefaces. You will discuss time-tested conventions and best practices in setting type, as governed by principles of hierarchy and spatial organization. And you will explore the expressive, meaning-making potential of type.

You will experiment with a range of materials and techniques to make images for graphic design. You will expand your visual vocabulary both in terms of making and talking about work, in order to discuss your work and work of others.

You will learn how to make, manipulate and arrange images to create compositions, eventually culminating in the design and production of an-image-based book.

3. Introduction to Graphic Design

Learn about the concepts and software that every designer needs to know.

In this course you will learn about:

on completion of this course, you will have a better knowledge that requires to become graphic designers.

4. Graphic Design Tools For Professionals

Learn the essential tools of Adobe Photoshop CC to jump right in and design beautiful graphics and photos in Photoshop.

In this course, you will learn:

5. Fundamentals of Graphic Design

This course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape.

In this course, you will learn how to:

This course will show you a range of analog and digital imagemaking techniques and discuss how they work.

In the first peer review assignment you will create your own series of images, experimenting with formal techniques.

After that, you will rework those images to enhance their ability to communicate an idea through connotation in an optional assignment.

You will learn about typographic terminology and the basic rules for creating typography.

The course will show you a range of tips and techniques for working with type, in both a functional and expressive manner, and you will find out about the process involved in making and controlling typography.

You will learn about visual contrast, color, rhythm and pattern in design. The course will show you the process involved in making an abstract design from shapes, and how to use that element to create a repeating pattern design.

You will understand how visual contrast and color work. You will create your own simple and complex design motifs, and you will use them as the central elements in designing a repeating pattern in the second assignment.

You will look at how designers work with visual contrasts, cropping, hierarchy and direction in single images and complex compositions.

You will find out how to control and use scale, weight, direction, texture, and space in a composition, and how to compose work that ranges from the complex to the minimal.

You will create your own abstract compositions that demonstrate your knowledge and control of visual contrast.

6. Become a Professional Graphic Designer

Learn what you need to know to break into the world of graphic design. In this course, you will:

You’ll learn everything from working with layers and selections in Photoshop, to formatting text and menus in Dreamweaver, to using pathfinders and special effects in Illustrator.

On completion of this course, you will have the strong foundation needed to get started in the world of graphic design, along with the skills needed to start working professionally straight away. Tools used in this course are:

7. Learn Professional 2D Game Graphic Design in Photoshop

Learn how you can create your own professional game graphics quickly in Photoshop! With this course:

The 2D Game Background Creation Course will show you how to create quick high quality stylized backgrounds for games and animations that will stand up as professional work. The techniques taught in this course can be translated into prop and character creation. This course will enhance or give you skills in the world of digital art creation.

The course is your track to building amazing attractive backgrounds. Whether for your own games or for other peoples projects. This course will take you from having little knowledge in Photoshop to creating professional backgrounds in as little as one week.

You’ll gain instant access to all five sections of the course including the bonus section where you will be shown where and how to find jobs creating digital art work that you can do from anywhere in the world. You’ll also gain access to 50 assets that have been created for your personal and commercial use. These assets can be used over and over again in your own games. The course is setup to quickly take you through step by step, the process of creating a digital background in Photoshop.

8. Graphic Design — An Overview of the Field

A survey course that explore nine graphic design specialties. In this course, you will:

This is a survey course, so it does not go into specifics about how the work is created, rather it’ll explore why the work is good, the thinking that went into it, and any other anecdotes it may have about each field.

It covers nine graphic design specialties. They are:

9. Canva Graphics Design for Entrepreneurs — Design 11 Projects

Learn Canva from scratch. Create 11 graphic design projects with Canva specifically for entrepreneurs. With this course:

This online course will teach you how to use Canva to create practical real world projects for your business or brand.

You can spend hours or even days trying to find the right tutorial online. Outsourcing the work can be an even bigger challenge just to find the right candidate to do what you need done. Whether you just want to enhance your Canva skills for business, or have a specific project you need done right this instant, this course is for you.

It will guide you every step of the way and make sure you succeed in your ventures. Get a Certificate of Completion when you finish the course!

10. Graphic Design Masterclass: The Next Level

Level Up Your Graphic Design Skills with Real World Projects: Logo Design, Photo Manipulation, Digital Design. In this course:

This is a practical design course which is meant to teach while showing and producing real world client projects.

The first section of the course focuses on Adobe Photoshop and photo editing and manipulation. You will review photo retouching and learn the content aware tool, which speeds up your workflow and works almost like magic. It will brush up on your brush tool and learn how to create realistic shadows.

You will learn how to work with the golden ratio and even try your hand at a logo based on the golden ratio. You will do a full logo design and branding project from scratch including the concept developing phase and how to pick the proper font, style and colors.

11. Graphic Design Masterclass: Learn Graphic Design in Projects

Graphic design principles, typography, & color mastery using Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. In this course, you will:

In this course, you will learn and then apply design principles to create various graphic designs, including an online advertisement, an effective infographic, a gig poster with type as a design element, and an illustrative postcard design. You will learn how color schemes can be created and applied in graphic designs. You will also learn how effective typography can improve your designs as well. The course structure is as follows:

All support files are included for the follow-along exercises and projects on design principles, color, typography, and projects. Bonus files are also included, such as photo and Photoshop brushes.

12. Graphic Design Masterclass — Learn GREAT Design

The Ultimate Graphic Design Course Which Covers Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Design Theory, Branding and Logo Design. In this course, you will:

It will extensively review Typography, color theory, layout and composition, how to use photos in design, photo manipulations and editing and magazine layout design, branding and logo design. You will also learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop, illustrator and InDesign and do projects with real world applications.

In Adobe Photoshop, you will review photo editing and manipulation techniques like how to cut objects out, the liquify tool and you will create a compelling social media graphic with your newly learned photoshop skills.

In Adobe Illustrator, you will master the pen tool by hand tracing simple and complex shapes. You will explore the power of the shape builder tool and In the end of this section, you will design a full logo.

You will create a magazine layout in InDesign and learn the master pages tool to drastically speed up your design workflow when working with multiple paged layouts.

13. The Complete Canva Course

Graphic Design for beginners — Learn how to create amazing designs with Canva. With this course:

In this course you will learn how to create amazing, beautiful, professional graphic designs inside Canva, one of the world’s leading free graphic design applications.

The course is split into three parts:

Text and Typography Using shapes and lines Adding icons and Illustrations Working with pictures and filters Adjusting colour, alignment and transparency Exporting your work

An album cover, A Youtube video thumbnail, Youtube channel art, A Twitter header, A Facebook cover, A Facebook post, An ebook cover, An A4 document with data charts, Presentation slides.

By the end of this course you will have created some amazing designs for yourself, and you will have mastered the skills necessary to achieve professional results.

Thank you for reading this. We have curated top tutorials on more subjects, you would like to see them:

Design 101: How to Make Great Graphics Without Design Skills

Intimidated by design? You’re not alone. Writing and coding is difficult enough on its own; visual content can feel like new (and, honestly, overwhelming) territory.

But fear not: You don’t need an art degree or thousands of hours logged in the Adobe suite to build engaging designs. With the right resources and a clear plan, anyone can put together compelling art for a blog post, Tweet, website, app, or other project. That means instead of asking your designer or hiring a freelancer to develop basic images, you can make them yourself.

Delightful design starts with the essentials. This guide covers the basic design elements—including line, shape, color, texture, and type—then explores more advanced principles like balance, contrast, rhythm, and white space. We’ll teach you how they can easily fit together to create great graphics to go along with your content.

We’ll also cover tools and resources you can use to spur creativity and build beautiful graphics faster.

Ready to send your design skills into overdrive? Let’s get started.

The Basic Elements of Design

Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.

Charles Eames, designer

Design isn’t something mysterious, only to be mastered by artistic prodigies. Even the simplest design can be broken down into separate chunks, or «elements.» These elements include line, shape, color, texture, and type.

Design is simply «a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose,» as ISDA’s Most Influential Designer of the 20th Century Charles Eames has said. Break the core elements of design down, and you can piece them back together into any number of creations.

But be warned: If you use the design elements arbitrarily, your design will arbitrary, too. Understanding how each element influences your design—and using them accordingly—lets you create something that evokes a specific emotion, complements your content, and aligns with your brand.

Let’s lay some groundwork by studying the core elements of design: line, shape, color, texture, and typography.

You know what a line is: anything that connects two points. Lines have a couple of important functions in design: separating content, and drawing your eye to a specific place.

Take a look at the MailChimp homepage. A line divides the menu at the top (a.k.a. the navigation bar) from the central focus of the page. Under the main section, we’ve got another line introducing Mailchimp Pro. This linear layout makes it easy for the visitor to understand exactly what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Digiday uses lines to draw your attention to key areas of site. Thanks to all the surrounding lines, the «subscribe» section of the homepage stands out—thus driving more visitors to enter their email.

Different lines generate different feelings, as well.

Horizontal lines evoke feelings of stillness and stability (think of a sun slowly sliding below the horizon).

Vertical lines, on the other hand, are energetic (picture an alert, upright person).

If you want to create a sense of drama, use diagonal lines—they convey a restless, even raw sense of motion.

Look at the Vibrant Composites landing page for an example. It contains two types of lines: the vertical lines of the hand, and the diagonal line in the right corner. Because both types are dynamic, this homepage feels exciting and powerful.

Lines might seem like a simplistic tool, but they’re crucial for organizing visual information, and setting the tone for a design.

Shape

When you read «shape,» you probably think of a square or triangle. Those are geometric shapes. But there are also natural, » organic» shapes, which are irregular and often contain curves (circles, for example, fall under this category, even though they’re technically geometric). Then, there are abstract shapes, which are recognizable but not realistic (a stick-figure, for example).

Like lines, each type of shape produces different emotional effects. Geometric shapes suggest structure, control, and order. Organic shapes, on the other hand, are more comforting and friendly. Abstract shapes communicate a information very quickly.

The Visage homepage uses purely geometric shapes, and consequently, it feels professional and reliable.

The Basecamp homepage, on the other hand, uses organic, rounded shapes to evoke warmth and childlike curiosity.

The Lyft homepage is a good example of including both organic and abstract shapes. The circles are pleasant and non-threatening, while the icons help communicate Lyft’s message quickly and visually.

When you’re designing something new, don’t forget about basic shapes—they provide the framework for our interactions on the web, and the forms you choose communicate more than meets the eye.

Color

The psychology and theory of color is extremely relevant to marketing. After all, people decide how they feel about a product within 90 seconds—and researchers have found up to 90% of that judgement is solely based on color. Plus, further studies have found consumers are more likely to buy when a color feels «right» for the brand.

Ultimately, no two people will have the exact same response to a color: we all have personal preferences, unique backgrounds, and cultural influences that affect what a color means to us. But there are general trends you can use.

Warm colors, like red, orange, yellow, and their variations, project passion, warmth, happiness, power, and energy.

Cool colors, including blue, green, and purple, are calmer and more soothing.

Neutral colors include white, black, and gray. Technically, they don’t have an emotional effect (but I’d argue «no effect» is an effect in and of itself!)

There’s also variation within colors. For example, you probably think of hunter green as more serious and somber than neon green. Luckily, it’s easy to look at a color and know instinctively what type of effect it’ll have—at least on people with a similar background to your own.

Take a look at Prezi’s site for proof. The bright blue feels energetic, punchy, and modern.

In stark contrast (literally), we’ve got the Revelator homepage. As you can see, simply flipping from black to white has a huge impact on your perception of the product and the brand. This design feels urban, powerful, and intense.

Color provides pop and emotion for your designs, but it’s easy to get carried away, too. If you’re building something to accompany text, readability is goal #1—avoid color combinations that clash with other elements or distract from your message. Your eyes are generally a pretty good litmus test for color; if it feels off, play with different hues.

Texture

It might seem kind of strange to talk about texture in digital design—after all, you can’t touch something through your computer screen. But you can still imagine how something would feel.

According to Smashing Magazine writers Jon Savage and Simon H., «Texture is becoming integral to design. It can guide the user’s eye and emphasize the importance of key elements.»

You can use texture in your background, as Houndstooth Coffee did.

You can also add texture through images.

On the site promoting [Uncharted]((http://uncharted.sunbrella.com/), a documentary about the US Olympic sailing team, the textural aspect of the waves makes you feel like you’re part of the scene.

That being said, flat design is currently experiencing a renaissance, eschewing texture, drop shadows, gradients, and anything that makes a design look 3-D. Instead, they’re using simple illustrations and icons, 2-D shapes, and bright colors.

This minimalism can feel refreshing and modern.

For example, check out the Make This Year landing page. Thanks to the typing animation and vibrant color combo, this design definitely doesn’t need texture to make it interesting.

Texture adds depth to design, though you’ll want to be careful when mixing materials. Tossing conflicting textures together—like wood and glassy surfaces—might turn a physical connection with your art into a more grating sensation.

Typography

Getting your message across matters. And typography—or, the art and technique of arranging lettes and symbols—has a huge impact on whether or not your audience understands that message.

First, let’s clear up the difference between a «typeface» and a «font». Think of each typeface as a family, and fonts as individual members of that family. For example, in the Helvetica typeface (or family), fonts (or family members) include Helvetica Regular, Helvetica Light, Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Compressed, and Helvetica Rounded.

Typefaces can be classified as well. Although there are several variations, the two most important are serif and sans serif.

Serif refers to typefaces with little decorative marks tailing from each letter. Popular serif typefaces include Times New Roman, Rockwell, Georgia, and Baskerville. Serif fonts are generally considered easier to read, since individual letters are more distinct, and they also feel more traditional or classic.

Sans serif includes typefaces that—you guessed it—don’t have little decorative marks. Helvetica, Arial, Futura, and Franklin Gothic are in this family. These typefaces feel cleaner and more modern, but can be harder to read.

There’s also monospace fonts, including Courier, Courier New, and Lucida Console. Each character of a monospace font is exactly the same width. They look like typewritten text, and are typically used for code, screenplays, and in some writing apps—especially for the first draft. However, they can be harder on the eyes than proportional fonts, so they’re not typically used for long chunks of text in design.

It’s also handy to understand the other factors that impact the readability of your text:

Tracking: How much space exists between each letter. The more space, the more readable your type is.

Leading: How much space exists between each line. Use a leading value that’s 1.25 to 1.5 times bigger than your font size. Size: Font size is a complex matter, as it changes depending on what device someone uses, how big the screen is, the settings he or she has applied, and so on. Jakob Nielsen, an expert in web usability, suggests using at least a 10 point font size—or perhaps bump that up to 12 points for better readability.

Hierarchy: This demonstrates the relative importance of each piece of information. You can create hierarchy using scale—notice how the title of this post is bigger than my name underneath? That’s because you probably care more about what the content is about than who wrote it. Traditionally, titles have the largest font size, followed by sub-headings, followed by body type.

Weight: You can also create hierarchy using various weights of a font. A weight describes a font’s thickness and is typically described as lighter, normal, bold, or bolder. In general, lighter weights look more subtle, graceful, and modern, while heavy weights communicate power and force. To see how changing a font’s weight impacts its appearance, try out this code editor.

Style: Like weight, a font’s style adds emphasis. «Upright» or «normal» is the most common, followed by «italic.» «Oblique,» which looks similar to italic, is the least common, as some web browsers don’t support it.

Line length: As the name implies, line length defines the horizontal width of your text. After detailed research into how people read, the optimal length for a line seems to be around 45 to 85 characters.

Just like wine and cheese, certain fonts work together better than others. A serif typeface with a sans-serif is the classic pairing, but you can definitely play around.

Typewolf—a curated collection of «fonts in the wild»—is a great source of inspiration for type parings. Typefinder is also really helpful: Answer a series of questions about where you’ll be using this type and what style you’d like (i.e. «web,» «modern,» «expressive,» etc.) and get matching suggestions.

And if you want to really sink your teeth into typography, you’ll love Typeface. This Mac app stores all of your fonts so you can compare them, both side-by-side and through overlays. You’ll be able to pick up on even the most subtle differences.

The Core Principles of Design

Now that you understand the basic building blocks of a design, let’s cover the guidelines for putting them together. These are the core principles that will help you build coherent and appealing designs: balance, contrast, rhythm, and space.

Balance

We’re always striving for balance: in work and life, diet and exercise, and of course, design.

With visual balance, imagine a vertical line running through the center of your design. For symmetry, there should be an equal amount of «stuff» on either side of the line.

That «stuff» has a technical term: «visual weight.» You should intuitively understand which elements have more visual weight than others; for example, the larger something is, the heavier it feels.

We can see the balance principle at work on Everlane’s homepage. The invisible line starts between the first «E» and the «L» in Everlane and splits the model on the left from the text on the right. She balances the text, creating the visual symmetry our eyes crave.

You can see another example of balance in InVision’s weekly email newsletter. Look at how the focus of the design actually shrinks as your eyes move down the page. The top header is balanced by the image below, which is balanced by the title, which is balanced by the sub-title, which brings you straight to the call-to-action button.

Everlane and InVision use vertical and horizontal balance, respectively. But balance doesn’t have to be straight up-and-down.

Check out the Webydo homepage for proof. Slice this page between the two iPads, and you’d have two nearly identical triangles. (Oh, and remember how diagonal lines convey energy and excitement? You can definitely pick up on that vibe here!)

Wondering what a lack of balance looks like? The US government is famous for its unusable and out-of-date design, and unfortunately, the MyMoney.gov website lives up to this reputation.

As you can see, the «Highlights» column extends twice as far down the page as the rotating image carousel—making the entire page feel lopsided.

This site also violates the principle of visual symmetry, as it’s impossible to equally split in half.

Contrast

Arranging dissimilar elements next to or near each other brings out their differences. That’s why before and after pictures are so effective—you immediately see how dramatically the person has changed.

Not only can you use contrast to highlight differences, but you can also use it to make your design easier on the eyes. Imagine trying to read light-gray text on a white background. It’d be pretty hard, right? But mixing a bit more black into the gray makes it far more legible.

Case in point: the Mint site.

Black text on white is a popular combination for this very reason (plus, it feels modern and clean). However, if you want to create different high-contrast pairs, use this contrast checker tool—after you plug in two colors it’ll tell you how readable that pair will be.

Rhythm

Just like listening to a good song, looking at a «rhythmic» design will make your audience feel excited, engaged, and at-ease.

Fortunately, creating rhythm is easy: Think of your design as a series of repeating blocks. Not only should each block be similar, but each element of each block should repeat as well.

To show what I mean, here’s the Product Hunt homepage. The «Tech» products section is mirrored by the «Games» section underneath. If you keep scrolling, you’ll find the identically formatted «Podcasts» and «Books» sections.

Not only did the designers repeat the general format, they repeated the font, image size, spacing, navigation options, interaction choices, and icons. As a result, the interface is incredibly easy to scroll through—even a little hypnotizing. You can create rhythm by reusing design elements, from layout down to icons.

The Valio Conference 2016 site is equally mesmorizing, but for a different reason: The speaker bio cards are layered on top of each other in a left-right, left-right design. This visual technique literally makes your eyes dance from side to side of the page.

The takeaway: Setting and sticking to a pattern for your layout lets your audience anticipate where content will be before they actually see it.

Space

Any time you see a blank or unfilled section of a design, you’re looking at white space. White space (also known as negative space) refers to everything around and in between the other design elements. And don’t think of white space as «wasted» space; as famous typographer Jan Tschichold explained, «White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background.»

Empty space provides the other elements on your page with «room to breathe.» It lets you highlight the most important information, increase readibility, and create a sense of order and simplicity.

The Clio homepage shows just how effective white space can be. Notice how refreshingly clean this page feels, and how your eyes are immediately drawn to the two blocks of text.

Poppies Flowers uses an ample amount of white space on their site as well.

As you can see, white space doesn’t actually have to be white. It’s any portion of the design that’s not drawing your attention—like the chalk background in this example, which pulls your eyes towards the central items and the text.

How to Quickly Create Effective Designs

Now that you’re up-to-speed on the basic principles, you can apply them to creating graphics for your blog, newsletter, website, and more.

Step 1: Choose a Background

A well-chosen background is essential to a great graphic. After all, your background gets more visual real estate than any other part of your design—plus, the right one will tell your audience what to expect from your content.

For our purposes, there are two main types of backgrounds: images and solid colors.

Images

Be picky when looking for a background photo. According to Neil Patel, randomly chosen stock photos get the fewest social shares of any type of blog visual. So, make sure the one you pick accurately represents your topic or theme.

It should evoke the right emotions and associations—which you can identify using the principles of design.

For example, if you need a visual for a blog post called «37 Mental Tricks for Instant Serenity,» you might look for pictures that incorporate horizontal lines, organic shapes, cool colors, some white space, and strong visual symmetry. Each of these elements evoke a sense of calm—an emotion that lines up perfectly with your topic.

This mountain range image would be a great choice.

Where to Find Images

You probably don’t want to scale a mountain and buy a fancy camera just to snap a shot for your blog post. Luckily, there are lots of resources for free high-quality stock photos.

Albumarium has thousands of beautiful images for private and commercial use. It’s especially good for non-cheesy pictures of people.

Death to the Stock Photo is an email newsletter that sends 10 new images in your inbox every month. The picks are curated for creatives, so there’s a lot of office and work-life pictures.

Unsplash adds 10 new high-resolution photos to their collection every 10 days. Once you’ve made an account, you can create collections, which is really handy when you need to find multiple images for a post or series. Plus, you can create a «future use» collection for all the photos that randomly catch your eye.

Gratistography is an awesome but relatively lesser-known site for stock photos. Because it’s not hyper-popular, you don’t need to worry about seeing the image you chose pop up on eight other sites.

New Old Stock curates vintage photos that are part of the public domain. That means you can get an old-school look, and use the images for whatever you want—no attribution required.

To learn about the latest stock photo sites, follow the Stock Photography collection on Product Hunt. Also worth bookmarking: Dustin Senos, Medium’s former head of design, keeps a running list of stock photo sources.

Solid Colors

Solid color backgrounds may be plainer than pictures, but they’re no less useful. After all, if you want to include multiple icons or lines of text, those elements could be overshadowed by a photo background. Solid color backgrounds, on the other hand, will draw your audience’s eyes right where you want them.

When choosing a specific color, keep in mind the «mood» each color generates. You want colors that align with both your content and brand.

Help Scout has done an excellent job with this. Its team uses on bright, monochromatic backgrounds for its visuals:

These colors feel energetic, simple, and even playful, reflecting Help Scout’s mission to make customer service delightful. Also, look how clearly solid colors set off the illustrations.

Rather than choosing colors based on their Pantone name (i.e. sky blue, violet, brick red and other color names you may be used to from paint chips or fabric samples), you should choose them by hex code.

The benefit to hex codes is that they look the same no matter what browser, device, or display your audience is using. That’s especially important for colors you’ll be using again and again, like your brand colors.

Where to Find Colors

Google’s Color Palette includes hundreds of primary and accent colors that have been designed to work in harmony. Google recommends picking a base primary color, like «Indigo» (or #3F51B5) and using that as your main color. Then, if you want to add more colors, you can use the suggested accents.

If you already know which Pantone color you want for your design, try rgb.to. This tool lets you search for the hex code for any color in the Pantone library. If you want to compare multiple colors to see how well they’ll look together, use Color Hex, which lets you create and save color palettes.

You should also have Coolors in your arsenal. This site randomly generates beautiful color palettes that you can either use whole-sale or adjust to your liking. Even better, it’ll create color palettes from any image you upload.

Finally, you can use Image Color Summarizer. It’s a free service that processes your image and identifies its average color hue, saturation, and value, along with the image’s most representative colors and how a human would describe them (lavender, gold, etc.). Definitely handy for getting an objective idea of how visually on-brand an image is.

Step 2: Pick a Tool

After you’ve chosen a background, it’s time to open a design tool. These apps range from fairly simple, like Pablo, to extremely powerful, like Photoshop. The tool for the job depends on how complex your graphic will be.

Pablo by Buffer is one of the most straight-forward options. You can either import your own image or choose one from Buffer’s library of 50,000 stock photos.) Since Buffer provides only three different size templates (Tall,Square, or Wide), it’s an awesome choice for social media graphics. However, if you want to customize your the dimensions of your visual, or use a solid color as your background, consider a different tool.

Designfeed, another graphics creation app, is like Pablo cranked up to 11. Upload your image, type in up to three levels of text (headline, subtitle, and button), and choose a platform-optimized size (Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc.).

The app produces several versions of your visual. If one catches your eye, you can share it instantly, save it, or tweak it to your preferences. And if you’re not digging any of the designs, just keep scrolling—Designfeed will churn out unlimited variations.

When you need an image for a tweet, try Spruce. Like the other tools, it lets you upload an image, add and style text, and download or share the result. But Spruce is specifically for Twitter, so it sizes your visuals accordingly.

Stencil offers a little more flexibility: there are 34 image size presets (including options for social media, ads, and banners), 200,000-plus free icons and graphics, and several photo filters. Oh, and Stencil lets you use solid-color backgrounds, too.

When you’re going beyond the basic graphic, Canva is a solid pick. It’s loaded with templates for almost every design imaginable—from YouTube thumbnails and Kindle Covers to Google+ photos and Tumblr graphics.

Unlike the other tools, Canva lets you add an endless number of photos to your visual. It’s an awesome feature for creating photo collages; plus, this feature lets you put a unique twist on images that tons of other blogs might already be using.

Piktochart is one rung up on the ladder of complexity. There are four main categories of graphics—infographics, reports, presentations, and posters—and oodles of templates for each.

You’ll probably use Piktochart most heavily for infographic creation. However, if you want to use this tool to create other visual assets (such as blog headers, social media posts, and newsletter banners), choose a template from the poster selection and give it custom dimensions.

As with Canva, you can use solid-color, patterned, or photo backgrounds. However, Piktochart offers far more free background options than Canva, a nice perk when you’re creating content on the fly.

If the other options I’ve mentioned range in functionality from bikes to motorcycles, Photoshop would be your Corvette. You can use it to design graphics, but it’s also a great tool for editing photos, designing web pages, working with video, and more.

But let’s say you are. The process is the same: Upload your image, then (optionally) apply filters. This Adobe tutorial on filters will give you a good launching-pad.

If your main focus is on web design rather than photography, give Sketch a look. It’s tailored to building interface layouts and working with shapes, and might fit better with the graphic style of your site.

Step 3: Choose Your Add-ons

Font Type and Style

The most simple graphic imaginable is background + text.

When you’re choosing which fonts to use, there are a couple things to keep in mind: where is this graphic going to live, and which fonts will be around it?

Let’s say you’re designing a header for your email newsletter. If your newsletter uses Lucida Grande (a sans serif), you should choose a complementary font, like Garamond (a serif).

You don’t just need external consistency: it’s also important that the fonts within your graphic don’t clash.

If you don’t want to play with font pairings, pick one font and use it for all of your text. You can create visual hierarchy by making the more important text (like the headline) larger; bolding, italicizing, or underlining it; or putting it in all-caps.

Adding another font to the mix is fine, but stop at two. And if you’re not sure which fonts to pair, opt for the classic combo of serif for the headline and sans serif for the body. (You can also pick one font and see which pairings Google Fonts recommends.)

That’s what I did for this graphic. After I chose Raleway for the headline, I looked up its suggested pairs and ended up choosing Open Sans.

Icons

When you’re trying to create a visual summary or make your design more engaging, icons work really well. But they tend to look out-of-place or busy on top of photo backgrounds, so only use them over solid backgrounds.

Some of the editing tools (like Canva, Piktochart and Stencil) have built-in icon libraries. However, if you’re using Pablo or Photoshop—or you don’t like any of the available options—there’s a few high-quality icon resources.

Smashing Magazine’s free icon sets are handy as well. It takes some time to sort through the options and find an icon you can use, but they’re high-quality—and free!

Miscellaneous

Surrounding your text within a geometric shape is a quick and easy way to make your design look professional.

It’s also handy when you need to make your copy more legible.

(You won’t be able to add geometric shapes in Pablo or Designfeed, so if that’s an effect you want to use, go with another tool.)

Uploading your brand logo is another option. Great designs sometimes go viral—and if you’ve created a fantastic infographic or inspiring quotable, you should get credit for it. Plus, having a discreet watermark in all of your graphics helps build visual consistency.

You might not have a transparent version of your logo. Luckily, you can create one in Photoshop or in Canva for Work.

Exploring Design Further

If you want to go further into the world of design, these resources are some of the best to help you get started:

Design for Founders: This collection of 55+ design posts is aimed at founders, but anyone who’s just dipping their toes into design will benefit from its thorough look at web design.

Design Pitfalls: Sign up for this free email newsletter to avoid «n00b designer mistakes.»

Designer Mill: Get hooked up with amazing freebies, from icons and free fonts to Illustrator and Sketch templates.

Crayon: Specifically designed for marketers, this site houses more than 20 million designs, including pricing, team, jobs, and trial pages.

GoodUI: A compilation of 51 interface principles that lead to high conversion rates. Music to every marketer’s ears!

Design for Startup: This compository is tailored to basic startup design needs.

You’ve done it—you know the basics of design, and are ready to start making your own great graphics. Put that together with content, and you’ll have a killer combo. Here are some other Zapier tutorials to help you craft content, make graphics, and turn them into blog posts and books.

Write faster and format your text with Markdown

Create reports for your content with these great report and chart apps

Craft content and tweak it with your team with these collaborative writing apps

Build an editorial calendar, then turn them into an eBook with our guide to publishing content

15 Graphic Design Tips for Beginners & Non-Designers

Written by:
Orana Velarde

A good set of graphic design tips always comes in handy when you are a beginner graphic designer, or even a non-designers on the journey to teach yourself some practical graphic design skills.

In this article, we share 15 of the most practical graphic design tips for beginners and non-designers.

Let’s get started.

15 Graphic Design Tips for Beginners & Non-Designers

As a non-designer, you might find your designs don’t look as polished and professional as you’d hope for. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

Below, we’ve put together a list of the best graphic design tips and tricks to help you create better-looking designs in no time — even without any design experience.

Tip #1: Keep it simple.

The no. 1 and most important design tip for non-designers and beginner designers is to keep it simple. There’s nothing worse than an overwhelming design that is difficult to understand.

To keep things simple, tap into your inner minimalist. Use the minimum amount of text and fonts, keep the colors under control and the visuals balanced.

Take a look at the flyer template below.

It’s simple, yet eye-catching. Even though there aren’t a ton of elements used, a lively background and bold fonts do the trick.

The secret to good design is not to stuff as many graphics and elements into your design as possible.

It’s achieving a balance between aesthetic appeal, and getting your message across clearly and effectively.

Tip #2: Use a cohesive color palette.

Color palettes and color schemes are as important as the message you want to relay with your design. Choosing the perfect color combination though isn’t always easy.

Thankfully, ready to use color palettes are easy to come by. Visme has a color theme picker as part of your editing tools. Simply browse through the color themes and try them out.

A great way to create color palettes is to extract the colors from an image. You can do this inside your Visme editor by clicking on the color picker and then the plus sign. Upload your image and you’ll have a new color palette to work with.

For more detailed color palette extraction, we recommend you use Adobe Color, a website that gives you several color palettes from any image.

Tip #3: Keep the typography under control.

The art of selecting fonts has a bad rep in the world of design for non-designers. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the choice of different fonts available online.

Not only that, you have to know how to pair fonts together in a design to make it look cohesive and pleasing.

A great way to bypass the stress of trying out a million combinations is to use tried and tested pairings. Professional designers also love new and beautiful fonts but if you ask them, they’ll tell you that they only use a handful of classic fonts most of the time.

One easy to follow rule-of-thumb if you want to make your pairings with different fonts is to use one novelty font for headings and a regular classic one for all the text. Below is a great resource to save you time when pairing fonts, a collection and tried and tested combinations for different occasions.

You can even use just one font family and create a pairing of its different weights. For example a Montserrat bold for the heading, a Montserrat regular for text blocks and italics for subheadings.

Tip #4: Consider the visual hierarchy.

Visual hierarchy is all about giving visual importance to some elements over others. In simple terms, it’s how headers are larger than subheadings, and these in turn are larger than a box of text.

The same applies to images, graphics, icons and even colors. When you use visual hierarchy rules, you bring attention to a focal point in the design. This creates a visual balance that then starts a visual flow of information for the viewer.

Visual hierarchy is a skill that comes easy for some people but for others, it needs to be learned. Our blog has a great article to help you understand visual hierarchy better.

Tip #5: Save time with social media templates.

Social media is one of the mediums where graphics need to be created constantly and regularly. There is no better way to save time than to use pre-designed templates.

Social media managers have to work on so many different channels with different required sizes. Thankfully there are templates available for every channel and every size.

Inside Visme, you can search for either a social channel, a type or a topic to find the templates you need.

Templates aren’t just available for social media, though. Visme offers templates for presentations, infographics, reports, invitations, CVs and more.

Tip #6: Always use white space.

White space isn’t exactly “white”. What white space means is that there is an empty space without text or elements on it.

It’s the area of the design where it “breathes”. This is one of the design techniques that is harder to master than others.

A good way to learn how to use white space is to study minimalist design. This is a movement that centers on the idea that “less is more” and you only need the bare necessities on a graphic.

Another use of white space is called negative space. This is a technique in which empty spaces tell more of a story than they would in the background or between other elements.

Tip #7: Use cohesive design elements.

When you add design elements to your project, they must have a cohesive style between them. This applies to all graphic elements; from icons to data widgets, illustrations, animations and even font styles.

For example, use all line icons instead of a mix of line and 3D.

Mix squares with rounded corners with other curved elements. Straight angled shapes with straight lines. Alternatively, break the rules and mix curves with straight lines as long as you keep a cohesive texture and color palette.

Tip #8: Optimize readability.

Another great tip is to always make your text easy to read. This applies to how you overlay text on backgrounds, the colors and fonts you use for headings and how elements relate to text and flow of the design.

Choose the best typeface for your project, one that not only matches your message but is also easy to read. It needs to be easy to read over a background image or texture.

Do everything in your power to make the context in your design easy to read and understand. This applies to both the actual text and visualizations like charts and data widgets.

Tip #9: Make good use of spacing.

Good spacing is one of the most important tools when it comes to creating balanced compositions. You find spaces in margins, between shapes, paragraphs, lines, words and even between letters.

Space is essentially white space, as we mentioned above. The difference is that in this case, it acts as a rule to help you align elements, keep them balanced and complement each other.

Grids, for example, use specific spacing measures to create a base for any design. You can learn more about grids and spacing in the article below.

Tip #10: An infographic can be of any size.

At some point along your journey in design, you’ll come across the need to create an infographic.

Most infographics on social media are long and vertical, thanks to Pinterest and blog with infographics. But what this tip is about is that not all infographics need to have those dimensions.

Infographics can be square, horizontal, printed, interactive or big as a wall. The choice depends on what type of content you need to visualize and where it will be published.

A long vertical infographic for a blog post can even be cut into blocks and placed throughout the content.

Tip #11: Consider the psychology of color.

Further up in the list, we talked about color palettes and color themes. But that’s not all you need to know about color. When you choose the colors for your designs, consider what each color represents in an emotional and cultural sense.

Designs with strong bold colors compared to soft pastel colors inspire different emotional reactions in the viewer. Think of the emotion you want to portray and use colors that reflect that.

The colors on the color wheel can be combined in different ways with color harmonies. Finding the perfect color harmony for your project will help you design better.

Psychology of color is a skill you should learn if you plan to use designs in marketing and sales. We have a great article about it on our blog that you should bookmark for future reference. Click on the link below to read it.

Tip #12: Know the dimensions you need beforehand.

Never start a project without knowing exactly what size it needs to be. Even though you can change the size later, you’ll have to readjust everything to fit into the new size.

For example, if you need to create a presentation don’t start with a vertical infographic size. Likewise, when creating a set of Instagram posts, make sure they are square, landscape or portrait with the following optimal dimensions.

Dimensions are measured in two ways; the length and width in pixels and the aspect ratio. Both are important to know when designing.

The aspect ratio is the relationship of the size to the width of a design, it can have different numerical values but will always have the same shape.

Social media graphics, for example, need to be created in specific aspect ratios but the dimensions can be different according to how detailed your design is.

Tip #13: Know what type of file you need when downloading.

Just how you need to know the size of your graphics beforehand, you also need to know the type of file to download when you’re done. For example, do you need a JPEG for a web image, a PNG for a cut-out design with a transparent background?

Or maybe you need an HTML5 file with animation and interactivity. Analyze what you’ll need before you start so you can design accordingly.

Then, download what you need plus any options you might also need. An interactive infographic will look great in a blog post but you’ll need a static JPEG version for Pinterest.

With Visme you have many download options. From regular JPEGs to printable PDFs, animated GIFs and video.

Tip #14: Stay organized.

Staying organized while you design is as important as choosing the right fonts and colors. When you have all your assets ready to use, you save time and can concentrate more on creativity.

If you need to bring images, icons or visuals into your design tools make sure you do the following:

The new Visme dashboard helps you stay organized with better folder arrangement and labeling.

Tip #15: Trust the design process.

Lastly, in the list of graphic design tips for beginner and non-designers, is to trust the design process. What we mean by this is: Don’t jump hoops or cut corners when designing something.

Below is a design process we created for you to follow. When you trust the design process, you have a better chance of creating a successful design.

Looking for the Best Design Tool for Non-Designers?

Are you looking for the best design tool for non-designers? Maybe that’s how you landed on this article in the first place. Well, you’re in good company.

As you probably know, there are many good design tools out there. From easy social media graphic creators to more robust design platforms with hundreds of templates to choose from.

Some of the best are:

Now that you’re here, why not take Visme for a spin? With Visme, you’ll be able to create any type of graphic, while learning basic design skills.

Our blog posts and video tutorials will help you learn how to use the tool and how to put elements together to create a cohesive and balanced design.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you’re new at design, you likely have a lot of questions. We’ve attempted to answer some of the most popular queries about graphic design below.

Q1. How can I improve my design skills?

Improving your design skills is not difficult as long as you put in the time to learn and apply new techniques. The amount of work you put into it depends if you want to work as a graphic designer or become adept at creating graphics for marketing.

To further improve your design skills, follow video and text tutorials. These will help you learn how to use design tools and also how to get better at design. Always look for design inspiration online to keep your creative juices flowing.

Tools like Visme, Canva and Adobe offer easy to follow tutorials to help you improve your design skills.

Q2. How can I teach myself to design?

There is a large variety of resources online to help you learn design on your own. But the one thing that will help the most is practice. The more you use your abilities, the more you’ll learn along the way.

These are the most important tips towards teaching yourself to design:

Q3. How do I design faster?

If you’re looking to design faster, then you need to use templates! Even professional designers use templates when they have to get things done in less time.

Another way to design faster is to use proven font combinations, practical color themes and pre-designed content blocks.

Q4. How do I get creative design ideas?

The best way to get creative ideas is to look at the work of other designers. Start browsing sites like Behance, Dribbble and Pinterest. Websites for brands like Apple, Anthropologie and Swatch are great for inspiration.

Look at design work from all levels, you can get ideas from anything. Templates are also a great source of inspiration. Slowly, you’ll start to have your favorites. Create inspiration mood boards to keep track of what you’ve found.

Additionally, you can keep your eyes open to design in everything you see. The videos you watch, the book you read, the products you buy, the ads you click on. Everything visual and creative can be a source of inspiration.

Q5. How can a graphic designer be self-taught?

Many graphic designers out there, both beginner and professional, are self-taught. Nowadays with the amount of readily available design courses, it’s easy to be a self-taught designer.

All you have to do is find courses and tutorials that will teach you both design fundamentals and detailed techniques. Never stop practicing.

Q6. What design course is the best?

There are great design courses for every different level of a designer’s career. From beginner and basic courses to the most advanced technical courses you could imagine.

To learn the most important design basics, consider taking the Coursera Design Fundamentals course.

If you were to ask us which design course is the best to learn how to design presentations, we’d have to say our very own Presentation Guru course.

Q7. Is graphic design a dying career?

Graphic design is not a dying career at all. In fact, it’s ever-evolving. Thirty years ago, graphic designers transitioned from handmade cut and paste work to the digital space. Nowadays, designers are having to transition to interactive content and more.

Now that there are easier and more accessible design tools, budding graphic designers are being inspired to learn more and grow in their new careers.

Q8. How long does it take to get good at graphic design?

The time it takes to get good at graphic design depends on each person’s ability and time invested in learning. Yes, some people are more innately creative than others, but it’s also true that creativity can be learned.

The biggest trick to get good at design is to know and accept that at the beginning you probably won’t be very good. Thankfully you have lots of templates and resources to help get you started.

Q9. How do beginners learn graphic design?

Beginners can learn graphic design in many different ways. There are short or long term courses available both in person or online.

Bachelor’s degrees are also available online. There is easy access to tools of different capacities, for designing in different styles. It’s easier than ever for beginners to learn graphic design.

Q10. What is the easiest graphic design software to use?

Visme is one of the easiest design software available online. It has many of the characteristics of the most expensive tools but is much easier to use.

It’s great for beginners because the professionally designed templates can help create amazing designs without the need for any design skills.

10+ Best FREE Graphic Design Courses Online

10+ Best FREE Graphic Design Courses Online

Just Creative is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more

Are you looking to learn graphic design online or start a career in graphic design?

One of the amazing things that the internet can offer is online courses. Whether you want to learn about graphic design, learn a new language, or learn how to start lettering, chances are there is a resource out there for you to learn how. In this article, we’ve compiled the best free graphic design courses online!

I know what you’re thinking though – that you don’t have the time. You have a full-time job and a house and kids to take care of and on top of that, you don’t have extra money laying around to spend on books or materials or to pay for classes, and you do not want to take another student loan to pay for them.

I get all of that and let me say that those excuses are just that. Excuses. Yes, we’re all busy and have other responsibilities. However, here is the wonderful news you have been waiting for…

These graphic design courses are 100% free.

Yes, free. I know it’s not a word we use much anymore in our culture. But if you are interested in taking a course in graphic design, whether you’re a beginner or have 25 years in the field, free is good.

With that in mind, we wanted to highlight some of the best free graphic design courses that you can find online in 2022 and beyond. That way, you can table the excuses, start learning and either add a new skill or sharpen an old one. Let’s get started!

This page contains affiliate links and I will earn a small fee if you choose to purchase using my links, at no additional cost to you.

How to Teach Yourself Graphic Design?

Becoming a graphic designer does not have to be done at school. In fact, if you follow the below steps and enroll in a free graphic design course, you will be well on your way to becoming a professional graphic designer.

How to Choose the Best Graphic Design Course for You?

Choosing to take an online course to learn a new skill, try a new path, or even as a refresher for the skills you already have is a very honorable thing to do. Like you, I understand that time, money and many other factors can keep you from picking one course to take over another.

We hope that the free design courses showcased here can give you some idea of some of the best free graphic design courses available online today.

10+ Best Free Graphic Design Courses Online

Below we’ve shared the top 10 reputable online graphic design course providers and their recommended courses to start teaching yourself graphic design.

Free Software to Learn Graphic Design

If you’re learning graphic design, you should know that Adobe provides the industry-standard graphic design software for creative professionals and that they offer free trials as well as some generous student discounts allowing you to save up to 65%.

Adobe offers a subscription service called ‘Creative Cloud’ which gives you access to several powerful design applications including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more. See the full Adobe software list here.

Free Graphic Design Classes on Skillshare

Skillshare offers prospective students lots of short but in-depth courses centered around graphic design. Many of these are available for free or, with a paid subscription, you can access them all. To help beginners, we wanted to highlight a few beneficial and free-courses.

The best part about Skillshare is that you can get Skillshare Premium free for 4 weeks!

1. Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design

Lectures: 9 | Length: 36 minutes | By: Ellen Lupton

Whether you’re new to graphic design or an old pro, everyone has to start somewhere. Generally, that means starting with the basics which is the focus of the Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design. This 36-minute class will walk you through 5 basic principles of graphic design.

Another class taught by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips will show you how to use those basic principles in projects that range from creative design, marketing, and even photography. Through the course, you’ll learn:

Lectures: 7 | Length: 18 minutes | By: Mike Ski + Jessie Jay

Taught by Mike Ski and Jesse Jay, designers from True Hand, the Creating Brand Systems course asks students to consider how a great logo or brand system comes to be. Through the six video courses, Ski and Jay describe the collaborative process they used to create the logo for Kensington Quarters, an eatery in Philadelphia.

A shorter class than most, the Creating Brand Systems course is designed with designers, illustrators, enthusiasts, and creatives in mind. Those looking for a high-quality walkthrough of what it takes to create a dynamic logo that can be used across many different channels and applications will want to check this course out.

Lectures: 10| Length: 36 minutes | By: Ellen Lupton

When you’re starting as a graphic designer, you may spend a lot of time perfecting the logo that portrays your brand to prospective clients, but what about the typography on your website or business card? What is that telling your clients about not only your business but about you as well?

Also taught by Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, this course teaches you the difference between good typography (which can be very beneficial for you or your client) and bad typography (which can have adverse effects). In this course you’ll learn:

Free Graphic Design Courses on Coursera

While not every course on their site is free, Coursera offers online courses from some top universities such as Stanford and Yale. At first glance, the site pushes you towards paying for classes but there is the option to “audit” the class.

This means that while you can take the class, none of your work will be marked and you won’t be able to earn a certificate at the end of the course. To take the classes for free, follow this guide here and get started right away. Here are some free courses you may want to consider:

1. Learn Graphic Design Online by David Underwood

Lectures: 4 modules |Length: approx. 27 hours | By: David Underwood

Taught by David Underwood, this Graphic Design course is structured to provide you with the tools to generate professional-looking reports, resumes, presentations, and PowerPoints using techniques and practices that have been refined through years of practical use.

Through 4 modules of this course, you’ll learn –

Module 1: How to make your work look inspired and fresh.

Module 2: Discuss the importance of working with a grid, recognizing negative space, and applying suitable margins. You will also look at the element palette, font, color, images, and graphic components such as borders, bars, and backdrops.

Module 3: You will learn how applying simple design “tricks” can give your project an air of confident professionalism.

Module 4: Finally, learn how to respond to criticism and use it to make your project go from good to great.

For a more in-depth course (6months) see their Graphic Design Specialisation course and their Coursera Plus membership that provides access to 3000 courses.

2. Fundamentals of Graphic Design

Length: 4 weeks, approx. 15 hours | By: Michael Worthington

Led by Michael Worthington, a member of the faculty at the California Institute of Arts, the course will teach you how to implement visual, rhythm, and pattern in the design. You’ll also learn techniques of image-making, how to create your own series of images as well as how to use scale, direction, texture, weight, and space in your project.

The Fundamentals of Graphic Design course does this by breaking down the topics into four one-week segments that cover a different topic each week:

Week 1 – Fundamentals of Image-Making – The lesson shows how an image functions to convey connotative and denotative messages in the first class.

Week 2 – Fundamentals of Typography – This week’s class looks at typographical terminology and the basic rules for typography creation.

Week 3 – Fundamentals of Shape and Color – Graphic designers use shapes and colors as the fundamental building blocks of their work. In this week’s class, you will take a closer look at how they do this.

Week 4 – Fundamentals of Composition – How graphic designers use visual contrasts, cropping, direction and hierarchy with complex compositions and single images is the focus of this week’s lesson.

3. Introduction to Typography

Length: 4 weeks, 8 hours | By: Anther Kiley

Anther Kiley, an LA-based graphic designer, teaches anyone who already has a basic working knowledge of and access to Adobe InDesign how to get the most out of the program’s features and tools.

The Introduction to Typography course goes in-depth into the different areas of typography and is broken down into 4 weekly lesson plans:

Week 1 – Talking type – In this week’s lesson, the course looks at typefaces, as physical artifacts as well as works of design.

Week 2 – Typefaces and their Stories – Exploring how a typeface can express connotative meaning, otherwise known as how they can tell stories, is the lesson’s focus this week.

Week 3 – Putting Type to Work – Learning to engage visual principles and the conventions of typesetting is the focus of this week’s class. A look at how the spaces between letters, lines, and blocks of type can be manipulated to refine their appearance is included as well.

Week 4 – Making Meaningful Type – In the course’s final week, the class will look at how typography can dramatically shape the meaning of written language.

BONUS: Coursera Plus – Get the ‘Graphic Design Specialization’ Course and 3000+ more courses

With Coursera Plus, you can access the Graphic Design Specialization and 3,000+ other courses in various domains including business, computer science, health, personal development, humanities, and more.

Coursera Plus will save you money if you are planning on taking multiple courses over the year.

Free Graphic Designing Tutorials on Domestika

Domestika is a relatively new player in the graphic design course market but they are growing quickly due to their professional teachers & high quality production.

Domestika has a whole blog post highlighting their 73+ free graphic design classes with special mention to their 10 free graphic design classes post as well as their 10 online classes for improving your illustrations.

We’ve also compiled our own top design course lists including:

Domestika Coupon Code – Save 10%

Get an exclusive 10% off with the discount coupon promo code: “JACOB_6-10”.

Free Graphic Design Courses on Udemy

Founded in 2009, Udemy is an online learning platform created to help people learn new skills. Many of the courses on Udemy can be perfect for someone looking to learn graphic design. We decided to highlight a few of these that we think you may find helpful, plus our list of the Top 10 Udemy courses.

1. Introduction to Graphic Design

Update 2022: This course is no longer free and is available for $116.

Lectures: 27 lectures | Length: 2 hours 24 minutes| By: Anthony Isaac

This Introduction to Graphic Design class is the perfect way to learn graphic designing online. Also, it is your way into the graphic design world with practical real-world examples. You don’t need any special software or hardware to take the course. As stated by the overview, the only thing required is “an open mind and thirst for knowledge”. You will use the web-based Canva to create designs.

Designed to be a practical application course, the Introduction to Graphic Design helps provide beginners with information about the graphic design field what is and isn’t considered a design, and the process that goes into designs. If you’ve ever had an interest in graphic design, but aren’t sure if you’re ready to take a practical class, this is a good first step.

This course is suitable for beginners or professionals. There are 27 lectures and over an hour of free content. You’ll learn all about Canva & many different graphic design skills that will prove useful in real-world projects like Logo Design or Business Card Design.

2. Learn Adobe Photoshop from Scratch

Lectures: 37 lectures | Length: 8 hours 2 minutes| By: Eduonix Learning Solutions + Eduonix-Tech.

Created by Eduonix Learning Solutions, this program provides students with eight hours of on-demand video. It doesn’t have any specific requirements to take the class other than already having Photoshop installed on your computer. It’s a comprehensive course that introduces beginners and experienced users alike to professional Photoshop principles.

The course is structured to provide you with hands-on software training while sharing tips and tricks that pros use. It does this by using task-based lectures and discussions about the Photoshop tools. Techniques and effects are taught through detailed process lectures. The Learn Adobe Photoshop from Scratch is a great class for anyone looking to get the most out of Adobe Photoshop.

3. Professional Logo Design in Adobe Illustrator (Free)

Lectures: 45 lectures | Length: 2 hours 22 minutes| By: Rawson Uddin

In Professional Logo Design in Adobe Illustrator, created by Rawson Uddin, students are given lifetime access to over seven hours of on-demand video courses, and a certificate of completion at the end of the course. The only recommended requirement is to have a basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator as the course is an advanced lesson.

Throughout the course, you will learn about a plethora of topics that can help you design your own logo or maybe even start a logo design business on the side. These topics include:

As part of course, you can download a working file to practice with as you go through the course. All in all, the Professional Logo Design in Adobe Illustrator provides a robust class for those looking to start designing logos.

Alison Free Online Graphic Design Courses

Any list we create would be incomplete without Alison Online on it. Taking the Visual and Graphic Design (2 modules of 1.5 to 3 hours) course on the site will earn you a test-based certificate upon completion, which can be great for anyone already studying graphic design.

If you’ve been working in graphic design for some time, you may not see the value in the completion certificate. However, if you are just starting as a graphic designer a certification in a subject can help establish credibility when trying to secure a new job or freelance project.

Founded by Mike Feerick, Alison Online offers completely free classes, but they are uncredited. This means that your current or prospective employers may not recognize the certificate of completion or diploma. Self-described as a “new world of free certified learning” Alison Online offers not only classes in graphic design but also in so many different subjects, that it’s worth checking out regardless.

Canva Graphic Design School

Canva has grown to include a design school for those who may not have that much experience with graphic design to learn the basics and helpful hints.

The Design School area of their website provides students with several resources that can benefit beginners, those with a little bit of experience, or anyone working in graphic design for quite some time. There is a great starter course for anyone looking to learn the basics of design.

The Design School from Canva is broken down into different modules for easy learning.

Shaw Academy – Adobe Certified Online Graphic Design Course

*Attn* – Some consumers have notified us that it is difficult to cancel the subscription after 4 weeks but I have contacted Shaw Academy and they have told us that they are upgrading their system at present to keep up with the increased demand.

Piktochart – Free Fundamentals of Visual Storytelling

Lessons: 7 lessons | Length: 1 hour 30 minutes| By: Sarah Kim

While this course focuses mainly on visual storytelling, Piktochart is a useful online application that can help you create beautiful infographics, reports, presentation slides, posters, flyers, and much more.Whether you want to create striking visuals to make your communication more efficient or reach out to the audience to grow brand awareness, this simple and complete course by Sarah Kim will definitely help.

This free course is divided into 7 lessons. An experienced instructor will show you how to use Piktochart to create and deliver a delightful visual presentation. Through the course, you’ll learn:

Envato-tuts+ – Adobe Illustrator for Beginners

Lessons: 20 lessons | Length: 3 hours 30 mins (approx.)| By: Daniel Walter Scott

Learning the basics and building a strong foundation are important for graphic designing. Adobe Illustrator is a popular software and this course revolved around it. The free Adobe Illustrator tutorial is perfect for beginners to quickly learn the basics of graphic designing. Even if you don’t know anything about the software and have absolutely zero knowledge in the design field, this super easy tutorial can help you develop some design and illustration skills. From the very basics like installation and setting up the software to learning about effects, patterns, shapes, logos, and other tools, you can master it all step by step.

As the modules are properly divided in the free course, you can skip to a set of videos in case you want to learn something specific. By the time you finish the course, you will be able to delightfully create patterns, drawings, logos, illustrations, and much more with ease. You will also learn to export your work for both web and print, and there are multiple exercises in the course as well.

More Paid & Free Graphic Design Courses Online

There are so many different sites out there that can help you learn more about graphic design, but I didn’t have the room to list them all. But to give you the best information to start your journey, here are a few more! If you have any other graphic design courses to add, let me know!

Top 3 Premium Graphic Design Courses on Udemy

Special Offer! 70-95% off All Udemy Graphic Design Courses

1. The Complete Graphic Design Theory for Beginners Course (approx. 8.5hrs)

Lectures: 73 lectures | Length: 8 hours 28 minutes| By: Lindsay Marsh + Jeremy Deighan

As the name of the course suggests, The Complete Graphic Design Theory for Beginners Course tackles basic color and layout principles, visual disciplines, and typography lessons. Led by brand experience experts Lindsay Marsh and Jeremy Deighan, this Udemy offering packs 10 downloadable resources, full lifetime access, and a certificate of completion. Prepare to upgrade your approach to design and become a more critical storyteller after finishing this course.

2. Graphic Design Masterclass: Learn Graphic Design in Projects (approx. 4hrs)

Length: 45 lectures, 3 hours 55 minutes| By: Chad Neuman, Ph.D.

There’s a lot to unpack in design, and Good Creative Academy founder, Chad Neuman, understands this. Join his Graphic Design Masterclass and immediately learn how to apply graphic design strategies, create stunning gig posters, and develop captivating online ads. With four hours of on-demand video and easy access to mobile and TV, you’re sure to become a wiser designer at the end of this Udemy favorite.

This is a fairly short but succinct course that covers the essentials.

3. The Brand Design Masterclass – The Brand Design Process (approx. 9hr)

Length: 56 lectures, 8 hours 30 minutes| By: Lindsay Marsh

The brand design process isn’t quick or easy. Take the cue from Lindsay Marsh, Udemy’s instructor for this Brand Design Masterclass course. Like her first course on this list, the brand expert is shedding valuable insight into the complex world of design and all it entails to succeed in the industry. But unlike her first offering, she explains sketching, brand voice, portfolio creation, and more tips and tricks.

Learn Graphic Design Online: Top Paid Graphic Design Courses

Looking for the best paid graphic design courses online? Here are a few 4 more options to consider:

Business Branding (4.5 hours)

Graphic Design Fundamentals (3.5 hours)

Designed for beginner and intermediate graphic designers as well as more experienced designers looking for a brush-up on design principles.

A Brand Called You (Personal Branding) with Debbie Millman (4.75 hours)

You’ll learn how to make a living doing what you love—graphic design.

10 Best Free Graphic Design Courses Reviewed

Watch our video to see a summary and review of the best free graphic design courses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I learn graphic design?

Udemy, Alison Online, and Skillshare are some places where you can learn graphic design for free.

Can you teach yourself graphic design?

Yes. With time, dedication, efforts, and a plethora of free graphic design crash courses, you can teach yourself fairly well.

Is graphic design a promising career?

Yes, it is. With a graphic design certification in your hands and your skillset, you can nail down a great job for sure.

How do I get into graphic design with no experience?

As newbie graphic designers seeking to gain experience in the industry, you can have an online presence, show off your work, get an internship, start your own project, or become a freelancer.

What software do graphic designers use?

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, CorelDRAW, and countless more from Adobe Creative Cloud. Gather more information about the software graphic designers use here. And see the full Adobe Software List here. There’s an endless list of software that a graphic designer can use.