How to Learn Design

Design refers to the collection of skills, including tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, that go into the creation of visual assets for print and digital projects, like business logos, brochures, and websites. Given how expansive the field is, anyone with an interest in creative design will be able to find a skill that is worthwhile to learn. The number of options for learning design might be overwhelming at first glance. There are books, video tutorials, classes, and more to choose from; it all depends on your learning style and personal preferences. 

Here, we’ll discuss the various learning design methods so you can decide how you’d like to get started.

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.

In-Person Design Training

Many students find in-person learning is the most effective way to learn a skill quickly and easily. In-person training lets students interact directly with experienced instructors in a classroom environment that maximizes learning outcomes. Students will be able to work alongside a cohort of like-minded student designers, and they will be able to avail themselves of the training center’s technology, which can be beneficial for students learning a lot of programs at once. The drawback is that these courses tend to be restricted to only a few locations, so students may find that they only have a few in-person training options if any if they don’t live in a major metropolitan area.

Noble offers comprehensive design training courses at their campus in Manhattan. Students who live in or can commute to New York City can learn from Noble’s expert instructors and take advantage of their state-of-the-art technology labs. Students who don’t live near Manhattan or would like to compare their options can visit Noble’s Classes Near Me tool to find in-person design classes in their local area, such as those offered through the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle or Ironhack in Miami.

Live Online Design Training

Students who aren’t located near an in-person training facility or who aren’t interested in a commute may find that live online design classes are a productive way to continue learning. These courses, which are taught in private digital classrooms by experienced instructors and the recent developments in online learning technology and pedagogy help ensure that students learning online are still receiving top-flight education and skills training. Students will get the opportunity to learn design skills in their home workspaces on the machines that they are most likely to use in their professional lives. Students will, however, need to provide their own software applications, which can become costly for students in advanced design programs.

Noble Desktop offers all design training courses through live online instructor options. These classes still come with all of the benefits offered by in-person training at Noble, including the assurance that class sizes will remain small and that students can retake the course for free within one year. Students can even give their instructors permission to interact with their devices directly via a remote access tool. For students looking to compare their options, Noble’s Classes Near Me tool can be an excellent way to explore alternative live online training options, such as those offered by providers such as Thinkful and General Assembly.

Free Online Courses & Tutorials

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.

On-Demand Design Classes

Many students may find it difficult to fit live training options into their busy schedules. Students with work and family obligations will need to find alternate learning options that let them move at their own pace. On-demand design classes will allow students to learn the design skills of their choosing asynchronously, meaning that they can be picked up and put down when the student has the time to manage a lesson. These courses are ideally suited for students who need to be able to control when they are learning and for students who want to prioritize certain lessons over others in a specific timeframe.

The major drawback in on-demand design classes is that the need for a live instructor means that students will need to find alternate ways to get feedback on their designs. The challenge in learning design skills is that they are often as much about learning how to apply theories as they are about learning how to use tools. Students need to constantly iterate on their designs, respond to feedback, and improve their work, which can be difficult to do if students don’t have a source of honest, professionally-oriented feedback.

Which Learning Method is Right for Me?

Students interested in learning design skills and tools will have a lot of different options available to them. This can be overwhelming for new students who aren’t sure which options will be ideal for them. While every student will learn differently, the course offerings tend to lend themselves to benefiting certain learning goals.

Most students find that live training is the best way to learn a new skill, particularly one as focused on technique as design skills. These courses will allow students to interact directly with live, experienced instructors and receive feedback and assistance in real-time. This makes it much easier for students to overcome the challenges of learning a new creative design tool, particularly if they are unfamiliar with fine arts training.

These live classes can be taken either in-person at a dedicated training center or online from the comfort of a student’s workspace. Students learning in person will be able to benefit from dedicated classroom spaces that are designed to ensure that students learning goals are met. They will also be able to work alongside a cohort of like-minded students and potentially take advantage of on-site hardware and software. Since these courses are taught at dedicated training centers, students must commute to a location to take these classes. This can mean that students have restricted or no choices in their preferred range. Online classes let students skip the commute and learn design skills from anywhere they would like. In addition, some students find that the classroom space isn’t as effective as learning on their devices. However, students will likely need to supply their software for these courses, which can meet or even eclipse the commute cost, depending on time and location.

Students who can’t manage to attend a live training course regularly or who want to learn a specific set of skills in a very limited time frame will want to enroll in an on-demand training course. These design classes are self-paced and asynchronous, allowing students to learn at their own pace and prioritize the skills they feel are most important for them to learn. These courses also tend to be cheaper than their live instruction counterparts. However, since there are no live instructors to assist students, they will need to find alternative ways to receive assistance and feedback on their work, which is one of the most complicated aspects of learning skills like Illustrator or After Effects.

Why Learn Design?

Learning design skills will allow students to turn their creative passions into career opportunities in almost any field they choose to enter. Every project, no matter how large or small, will need to employ creatives with design talent if it aims to communicate with a mass audience. Visual communication is essential to modern rhetorical persuasion and commerce, meaning that skilled designers will be involved in everything from logo design and branding to political campaigns and advocacy awareness. Both the private and public sectors employ designers to help them communicate and persuade their audiences, and there is no shortage of career opportunities available for talented creative designers.

Learning design skills is also a wonderful way for creatives to expand their work scope and reach. Digital design spaces represent a new canvas upon which designers can create their own complex work and reach audiences they would otherwise never have been able to reach. Digital art projects are becoming increasingly influential in political and social activism and the general art community. On a smaller scale, aspiring artists can utilize digital design skills to enter the world of digital art commerce and better position themselves to stand apart from their competition in this increasingly competitive marketplace. 

Read more about why you should learn design.

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.

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 refer to a wide array of tools and techniques for creating visual design assets, like logos, advertisements, or informational posters.
• Students looking to learn design skills will have quite a few options. These include both live training courses and asynchronous training courses.
• Live training options, available in person or online, are ideally suited for students who want to receive an immersive training experience.
• On-demand training options are the best fit for students who need to keep their schedules open and flexible.
• Students looking for guided design instruction should consider enrolling in a comprehensive design training course or bootcamp, offered in person or live online, through Noble Desktop.