How Long Does it Take to Learn Design?

Like many aspiringGraphic Designers, Visual Designers, and Digital Designers, you might want to learn design but worry that it will take too much time. Few designers, even professionals, will learn to use every design tool and technique. Therefore, the time that it takes to learn design will vary depending on what skills you want to learn. Students can quickly pick up the basics of each tool, and learning one tool will speed up your lessons in other tools. However, professional skills training can still take weeks or even months of dedicated study. Of course, this depends on several factors. Keep reading to learn about how you can learn design and some resources to help speed the process along.

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.

Average Time it Takes to Learn Design

There is no real average time to learn design because every student will learn different design skills and will likely learn them differently. Students can enroll in bootcamps to learn specific skills in as little as a week of dedicated study, or they can enroll in a career training program and spend a month learning a collection of skills to prepare them for a new job.

Other Factors

Some factors will cause students to learn design skills more quickly than others. These include prior training in creative design applications, knowledge of design principles, and professional design goals.

Prior Creative Training

Students will learn design skills more quickly if they have any background or experience with other kinds of creative training, even things like art school training. This is especially true for students learning design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator because they are so heavily integrated and designed by the same company to be used in complementary ways.

Knowledge of Design Principles

Students with a design theory background will also find it much quicker to learn design skills. For many students, learning the tool is the quickest part of learning a design skill. The time-consuming part is training in the techniques required to use that tool well. Students who already understand and can implement design techniques will have a faster time picking up a design skill.

Professional Goals

The time it takes to learn a design skill will also depend heavily on the student's professional aspirations. Students hoping to build a career in the design field will need more training and hands-on experience than those hoping to work on design projects for their private use.

Factor #4

Level of Difficulty, Prerequisites, & Cost 

Since design isn’t really a skill as much as it is a field of different skills, it is hard to gauge exactly how difficult it is to learn. Some skills are harder to learn than others, particularly when designers shift from 2D to 3D design, but each skill will be different for each student. Since much of the difficulty in learning a design skill is learning theories of design and iterating on designs and styles, the more design skills you learn, the easier each subsequent skill will be to learn.

The prerequisites for each individual will vary depending on the program. As a general rule, graphic design programs like Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator won’t have a ton of prerequisites. Web design skills, like Figma, will have graphic design skills as prerequisites (or will be taught alongside them), and motion graphics skills will require a significant amount of familiarity with computers and elaborate computer design tools (though likely not any program in particular).

The cost of learning design will vary depending on the kinds of programs that a designer seeks to learn. Students who only want to learn Photoshop will only need to license that program, while students looking to become proficient in all the major graphic design tools will need to license several different programs. As a general rule, most industry-standard graphic design tools are licensed through Adobe Creative Cloud; they will generally require students to pay a monthly subscription fee. While this fee fluctuates, it is generally $20 a month per program or $55 a month for the full suite.

Read about how difficult it is to learn design.

Watch a Free Design Online Course

Students who aren’t ready to enroll in a full-time, professional design course may want to consider taking advantage of some free training options. These courses give students a chance to learn design skills in a low-stakes, low-stress environment, and they give students greater control over the pace and style of their learning. These courses won’t replace professional skills training if you want to make a career out of those skills, but these courses are excellent places to start learning. As a bonus, all of the skills students learn in a free training course will make it easier to transition to a more paid training seminar, as students will already understand the basics of the course.

Noble Desktop provides students with several free training resources in almost every design tool you would want to learn. First, students must find out what type of design training they want to pursue. To help with this, Noble offers a Getting Started in Design seminar in which students can learn the differences between graphic design, visual design, UX/UI, and motion graphics design and learn what kind of tools and applications each subfield utilizes. This will allow students to make more informed decisions about the kinds of training that they want, after which they can visit Noble’s free seminars page to explore the options available for the specific skill set they want to pursue.

Students looking for other free training options may wish to explore those offered by other service providers such as Udemy or Coursera. In addition, most graphic design applications, particularly those that make up the Adobe Creative Cloud, have first-party training resources on the program provider's website.

Read about more free design videos and online tutorials.

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.

Key Insights

• Design skills aren’t really one skill but are a collection of skills related to the design and production of visual assets meant to mass communication, like brochures, brand logos, and webpages.
• Very few students will learn all manner of design skills and will instead specialize in a medium or set of tools. This means that the time it takes to learn will vary from student to student.
• Students can speed up the process of learning design skills by learning other tools, studying design philosophies, and gauging their own professional aspirations.
• Another way to speed up the learning process is through professional development training, such as the training courses Noble Desktop offers in person or live online.