Explore the exciting field of UI design and learn about how it influences the digital applications we use daily. Discover the various career paths available in UI design and the potential salaries, and understand the role of both visual and graphic design skills within this fast-growing industry.

UI Design Cost: How Much Does UI Design Cost?

UI design work doesn’t have a set cost. Instead, the cost of UI design work will vary depending on the number of tools a designer wishes to use and how expensive those tools are to license. While the only required tool is a user experience layout design tool, many UI Designers will use other tools to improve and expand the potential of their designs.

What is UI Design?

UI design is the field of graphic design concerned with how digital applications look and how they communicate information to users. UI designers ensure that a digital application looks appealing and communicates effectively with its audience. UI Designers will create digital assets using graphic design programs and then build layouts and prototypes of those layouts to share for collaboration and testing. UI design pairs closely with UX design. UI designs concern themselves with how the digital application looks, whereas UX Designers concern themselves with how the digital application feels. These two fields work closely enough together that often, one designer will do both.

Visual and graphic design skills are vital to the field of UI design. UI Designers will need to learn how to utilize a variety of different graphic design programs, and they will need to understand theories and philosophies of composition. Images and graphics communicate a large amount of information in a small space, and it is the job of UI Designers to ensure that the information a digital application communicates aligns with the desired message that a client seeks to send. This will mean that UI design focuses heavily on any project's small details, assuring that all design elements come together to communicate ideas effectively. UI design is thus concerned with both the big picture design of a digital application and the visual design of the various individual components that are used to build the appearance of that digital application.

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

What Can You Do with UI Design?

Training in UI design will help creatives build vibrant and instantly memorable web designs and user interfaces for digital applications. UI Designers can blend text, images, and graphics to create functional and evocative designs using the various design programs. Unlike traditional graphic design projects, UI design projects will let creatives maximize the affordances of the digital canvas they are given, and UI Designers will be able to create digital layouts that communicate effectively and quickly. With so much modern communication happening over the internet, learning UI design is a powerful tool for expressing the interests of oneself and one’s organization.

UI design is also a useful skill for creatives who aren’t necessarily planning to build a career out of their graphic design training but still want to optimize their digital presence or their organization. Given the number of web applications designed to ease the process of web development, individuals can start designing and building digital applications for themselves or their organizations without only a little bit of UI design training. This is a bonus for small businesses, up-and-coming charities or nonprofits, advocacy organizations, and any other interest group that may want to build a web presence but is hesitant to hire professional Web Designers.

Finally, learning UI design can give existing creatives an entirely new medium to express their ideas. While web design is concerned with the functional elements of a digital application, learning UI design will allow artists and designers to build unique installations and projects that would otherwise be impossible to construct in a physical space. While most people receiving UI design training will do so with professionalization, learning how to build assets and art pieces online can give artists a new space to experiment with their creative ideas.

In-Depth Review of the Cost

The first thing a new user will need to do is acquire a user experience design tool so that they can start building digital application layouts. Some of these tools are the most commonly used: Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch. Noble offers a free introductory seminar detailing the differences between these programs. 

Figma offers a robust free version of its program, allowing users to experiment with almost all of its design features for as long as they want. After this, a license will cost users about $9 a month. Sketch offers a lengthy free trial of their full program, after which users will pay about $7 a month to license.

Adobe is unique in its pricing structure because Adobe also offers users the option to license other creative suite applications through the Adobe Creative Cloud. While users can license just XD for about nine dollars a month, they can also license a package that includes all of their programs, such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, for about 54 dollars a month. This package may be ideal for UI Designers hoping to utilize other creative software to expand the scope of their design.

Free alternatives to programs like XD, Illustrator, and Photoshop are all available, as are paid alternatives. Ultimately, the price of working in UI design will vary wildly from user to user because each tool has its own set of pricing plans, and each user will use a different collection of tools.

Why Learn UI Design?

More so than ever, companies and organizations are investing large amounts of money and resources into their digital presence. Web design is booming; the mobile app industry has been growing for years, and building a coherent online brand identity is incredibly important to new businesses and organizations. These concerns are partly addressed by specialists working in UI design, as the look of a digital application informs and colors users’ first impressions of a product. Learning UI design skills will position students to enter the visual and graphic design field, focusing on the fast-growing digital side of the industry.

In addition, UI design training will provide students with valuable knowledge of visual design and communication theories. So much modern communication, particularly online, is done through graphic design projects, so learning the ins and outs of UI design can add another layer to a student's understanding of how to communicate ideas using only visual elements of design effectively. This training will make them better communicators and better equipped to understand the visual strategies employed by other graphic designers in different fields.

Finally, learning UI design is a great way to learn many transferable career skills applicable to creatives in most industries. UI Designers will work with specialized user experience design tools, but they will also work with more generic creative tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. This means that learning UI design will help students hone skills they can apply to any creative project, whether digital or otherwise. This makes learning UI design ideal for aspiring creatives who aren’t yet entirely sure that there is a specific medium they will be working in for the rest of their careers.

Read more about why you should learn UI design.

Free Introductory UI Design Course Online 

Interested in learning UI design, but don’t feel like you’re ready to take the plunge into a professional training course? You may be interested in learning some of the basic UI design skills through free online courses and resources. While these courses are unlikely to replace a student's professional training in a UI design bootcamp, they are an ideal place to start learning fundamental UI design skills. 

Noble offers several free introductory courses through its website and official YouTube page. Noble offers a free Intro to UI Design course and a free Intro to Figma course. These courses will cover the basic elements of design philosophy and the basic functions of one of the market's most common UI design tools. These courses can help students become more comfortable with the ideas and programs they will practice during more advanced training courses.

In addition, Noble offers many pre-recorded courses covering web design and development concepts and graphic design concepts on their YouTube page. These video recordings will help students understand tools like Photoshop and Illustrator or design platforms like WordPress. These training options are ideal for students looking to get a taste of the various flavors of graphic design and who aren’t yet confident that UI design is right for them.

Free courses are also available through other professional training services, such as GeneralAssembly, Udemy, and Coursera. Additionally, for individual applications and tools, first-party developers like Adobe and Figma provide users with tutorials and videos instructing new users how to take advantage of their applications.

Read about more free UI design videos and online tutorials.

Learn UI Design with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Once students have committed to learning UI design, they can receive hands-on training in one of the many UI design classes offered through Noble Desktop. These courses, available both in-person at Noble’s Manhattan campus and online, provide students with career-focused skills training in an industry-recognized educational environment. Students will benefit from working with live instructors who can answer their questions, provide feedback, and help them overcome any learning challenges they encounter. Even online, Noble’s classes boast small class sizes so that students can receive individual attention from their instructors. Plus, Noble offers free retake options, meaning that a student can re-enroll in a completed course within one year to receive additional training, review material, or just get a bit more hands-on UI design experience.

Students looking to learn the basics of UI design may wish to consider enrolling in Noble’s UI Design Bootcamp. This course will provide students with hands-on experience, using practical examples, designing the appearance of web pages and mobile applications. Students will receive training in the basic theories of composition and design and one-on-one feedback from expert instructors on the make-up of their UI design projects. This course is ideal for students hoping to learn the ins and outs of how to apply their existing knowledge of visual design tools to the process of building digital applications. Students who wish to enroll in this course should have a working knowledge of the user experience design tool Figma. Students looking for this training can enroll in Noble’s Figma Bootcamp.

Noble offers a UI Design Certificate program for students who want a more career-focused learning experience that will teach students all of the important fundamental skills they will need to enter the workforce as UI design specialists. Students will learn theories of composition and design and how to apply those theories of design to web pages and digital applications. In addition, students will learn how to use design tools like Figma, Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator. This course caps off with a series of lessons concerning how to build a design portfolio to take onto the job market. With portfolio design training, one-on-one career mentorship, and the reception of an industry-recognized skills certificate, this course is ideal for students looking to build new careers in UI design.