How Difficult is it to Learn Design?

Are you curious about learning design but worried it might be too hard? Of course, the difficulty that comes with learning a new skill is somewhat subjective. The challenges of learning design depend on factors like how much assistance a student has in learning design, how much time a student can dedicate to practicing, and what kind of designs a student is hoping to work on.

No matter your current schedule or comfort level with design, plenty of tools are available to help make learning easier than you might think.

What is Design?

Design is an incredibly broad category of skills that refers to utilizing computers to assist in visual communication. This can range from simple graphic design work such as photo manipulation or print layout design to complex 3D animation projects or interactive digital interface design work. Visual and graphic design is vital to any product release, information campaign, rhetorically-effective communication strategy, or web design project. No matter what kind of work is being done, if it intends to communicate with a mass audience, specialized design skills will be needed to make that communication possible.

The tools utilized by Designers are varied, and each tends to have its own niche functionality that differs from project to project. For example, photographers will use photo manipulation tools like Photoshop and Lightroom, Layout Designers will use tools like InDesign and Figma, and Motion Graphic Designers will use After-Effects, Cinema 4D, and Premiere Pro. Rather than learning and mastering every design tool available, Designers will specialize in specific elements of the design process and learn those tools. This makes design a highly varied field to enter, and it offers students a great opportunity to both experiment with different programs and turns their passions into a creative career.

Read more about what design is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Design?

As a creative form of visual expression, the things you can do with design are largely limited only by your imagination and the number of programs you are willing to learn. Users can design vibrant and evocative visual compositions ranging from simple logos, photo manipulations, and posters to complex 3D animations and digital web assets. Almost every professional field employs designers to ensure that their output looks the way they intend it to look and communicates the ideas they want. This is true of both the private and public sectors, given that design tools are just as important in persuasive and advocacy contexts as in commercial and advertising contexts.

Learning design skills is also a great way to build your profile and brand online. Online content creators need to set themselves apart from the crowd, and learning to make vibrant visual designs is a perfect way to do so. Whether this is about producing a logo for your website, designing recognizable branding for the products on your Etsy store, or editing and manipulating video content, learning design skills can improve your creative output. Design skills are also at the center of several different emerging online art and activism movements. Learning design skills can give creatives many mediums to produce rhetorical compelling advocacy content like infographics, digital documentaries, and docu-games.

What Are the Most Challenging Parts of Learning Design?

For most students, the most challenging part of learning design skills won’t be learning how to use tools like Photoshop and After Effects. These tools are relatively easy to use and designed for maximum accessibility. While there may be challenges in learning the program's more advanced features, the major challenge that most students face is learning the techniques of design and how to apply them to their projects. This takes time, practice, and constant iteration to get right.

How Does Learning Design Compare to Other Fields?

The field that people most closely associate with design is the plastic arts, such as drawing or painting. While the two fields share a great deal of overlap in terms of philosophical skills, design more heavily emphasizes computer-aided content creation. This means that if you learn design you will spend as much time learning about the tools and functionalities of those tools as you will about the practice of creating visual art. Visual art students may naturally gravitate towards design and find that they have a lot of transferable skills, but the two fields are distinct in the kinds of tools they work with.

Design is also often associated with copywriting and content development. While these two groups of professionals often work very closely together, they are rarely performed by the same person within a firm or a company. Content developers are responsible for creating the outlines and strategies for content creation, while copywriters and designers build different elements within that content strategy.

A less obvious association with design is digital development. For most digital projects, designers work alongside developers to see a project through to completion since visual creativity alone won’t launch a webpage or an online advertising campaign. In most web design projects, designers are responsible for deciding how a project will look, and developers are responsible for building the code that makes that project work. The primary difference between the two is that learning design skills won’t require you to learn how to program, and learning development skills won’t require you to be particularly creative if you don’t want to be.

Professional Skills Training

One of the most significant advantages of enrolling in a professional skills training program for design students is that live instructors are available and ready to provide students with feedback on their sample designs. This feedback is invaluable for students looking to learn how to apply design techniques properly. Receiving it can make learning a new design skill much easier and less stressful.

Learn Design with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Students looking to master design skills can find the path to success through the expert instruction offered at Noble Desktop. Noble offers a wide array of design courses, from introductory bootcamps that will teach students the basics of an individual program like Photoshop or After Effects to career-centered design certificate programs that will give students all the tools they need to enter the professional world as designers. Noble’s classes are available in person at their Manhattan campus or through live online instruction. Regardless, all of Noble’s classes are taught by expert instructors who are present to help guide students through the process of learning design skills. Each course ensures small class sizes so students won’t fight for their instructor's attention, and all of Noble's classes come with a free retake option, allowing students to enroll in the course again, for free, within one year. This means that students will have even more time and opportunity to get hands-on experience and instruction in design skills.

Students looking to become Graphic Designers may consider enrolling in Noble’s Graphic Design Certificate program. In this class, students will receive introductory and advanced training in tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. These are the industry-standard tools in almost every field of print and physical design. Students enrolled in this program will receive hands-on experience working on real-world projects, such as designing signage, infographics, product packaging, logos, and branded merchandise. In addition, since this is a career-focused program, students will receive professionalization training, including one-on-one career mentorship and portfolio-building seminars designed to prepare students for entry into the job market.

Students looking to work in a more digital environment may wish to enroll in Noble’s Digital Design Certificate program. This course teaches students how to use programs like Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop and applies those skills to digital spaces, such as webpage layout design or user interface design. Students will learn digital design theories and philosophies and master necessary web design tools like Figma. This course also offers students the opportunity to receive one-on-one career mentorship. Students will build specialized design portfolios to position themselves as career-ready Web Designers and UI Designers. This course has no requirement for coding, meaning students can focus on the visually creative elements of web and digital design.

Noble also offers a wide array of certificate programs and bootcamps across all disciplines of design, including graphic design, web design, UX/UI design, motion graphics design, and video editing. No matter what direction you choose for your design education, Noble Desktop has a course built to suit your needs.