Graphic Design & Video Editing Courses in NYC or Live Online

Learning Graphic Design and Video Editing

Anyone interested in learning a creative skill or turning their creative passions into a marketable career may want to consider graphic design or video editing training. In these creative courses, such as the ones offered through Noble Desktop, students will receive hands-on experience working with the tools and techniques that professional artists, designers, and editors use to create everything from print advertisements and brochures to feature-length films. Graphic design and video editing cover a wide range of creative professions, fields, and industries, so if you are interested in a creative career, there is bound to be an option that fits your needs.

Graphic design and video editing are two fairly different creative endeavors, so students will want to consider the major differences between them and the tools used in each field before committing to a training program. Regardless of what skills you choose to learn, students enrolled in one of these classes will receive professional instruction in graphic design or video editing. You’ll work with expert instructors who can provide practical feedback on your work and learn how to use creative design applications through hands-on lessons that mirror the projects that professional Graphic Designers and Video Editors handle.

Differences Between Graphic Design and Video Editing

While they are both creative career paths that stress the importance of visual communication skills, graphic design and video editing are fairly different, and there isn’t a lot of overlap between the tools and techniques used in each field. Graphic Designers use digital drawing and photo manipulation tools to create static images. While some Graphic Designers will manipulate photos or alter existing graphic content, most graphic design work involves creating new designs. Even though they regularly use digital design tools, Graphic Designers’ work tends to resemble the plastic arts more than most other digital design professions. If you are interested in art forms like drawing and painting, graphic design will likely interest you.

Video editing, by contrast, takes a more technical approach to visual communication. Rather than using digital tools to create new graphic designs, Video Editors piece together raw footage to create new video files from existing material. Video editing is very detail-oriented since you must account for creative decisions and mundane quality issues, such as maintaining continuity between shots and syncing audio and video together. This part of the process can either be one of the most appealing parts of professional video editing or feel like grunt work. How this aspect sounds to you is an important part of deciding whether or not learning video editing skills is the right decision.

What are the Tools you can Learn?

Graphic design and video editing are creative fields defined in part by the ways in which students and professionals utilize digital applications and software to create incredible visual projects. Graphic Designers and Video Editors will learn to use industry-standard creative software tools to handle everything from photomanipulation to web layout design, video editing, and sound mixing. Learning how to use these tools is the most important part of your graphic design and video editing training, and knowing what tools are available to you can help you figure out the path you want to take with your education.

• Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop is the most commonly used photo editing software on the market (so much so that Photoshop has become a stand-in verb for “to manipulate a photo”). This tool allows users to alter pixel-based images in large and small ways digitally. Whether you want to make a subtle alteration, such as changing the lighting in an image or smoothing out a color gradient, or substantial changes, like removing entire background objects or adding digital assets into an image, Photoshop gives you the tools you need. Photoshop is often paired with other graphic design tools like Figma or InDesign to create the images and assets used to populate page layouts and websites. Plus, owing to the rise of mobile web browsing, Photoshop has become the go-to application for building GIF files.

• Illustrator: Often thought of as the sister program to Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator is the premiere vector graphics design application on the market. While Photoshop is used to work with images built out of pixels, Illustrator is used to work with images made out of lines, shapes, and arcs. The main difference is that a pixel-based image can’t be effectively resized without becoming blocky or losing definition, a vector-based image can be easily resized without needing to be redrawn or modified. This makes it the tool most commonly used for creating images, such as logos, branded merchandise or product packaging that must be displayed on various surfaces. Illustrator also lives up to its name as a useful tool for drawing and sketching illustrations using its pen tool.

• InDesign: InDesign is a page layout application that creates wireframe layouts for everything from magazine ads to business cards to entire novels. While it is most commonly associated with print mediums like magazines and newspapers, InDesign is used in any field where creatives need to construct layouts that other assets can populate. This means that if you make posters for an event, menus for a restaurant, or brochures for a service, you will likely want to learn InDesign. InDesign is also a very useful efficiency tool for anyone needing to create a large number of page layouts, such as someone looking to publish a book or working for a newspaper. InDesign has begun to fall out of favor as digital publishing overtakes print publishing, but it is still a versatile tool to add to any Graphic Designer’s repertoire.

• Figma: Recently acquired by Abode, Figma is a collaborative, browser-based web layout design tool used to design and test webpage and digital application user interfaces. This tool lets users work together on user interface designs from any device with a web browser, making it an ideal tool for complex web design projects. It also allows users to create working prototype versions of their design that can be used to test user behavior and respond to feedback on the interface. Figma also provides users with their brainstorming and team-building collaborative application, FigJam. If you are interested in web design and want to learn how to build and prepare layout designs for user interfaces or you are interested in learning about user experience design, learning a tool like Figma is an important part of the process.

• Premiere Pro: For students looking to learn video editing, you’ll need to learn an application like Adobe Premiere Pro. This video editing application allows users to cut, merge, and edit together video files and publish them when they are completed. Premiere Pro is a multi-purpose video editing application useful for beginners and aspiring professional filmmakers to learn. Using Premiere Pro, you can easily make simple edits and transitions between two shots, mix audio, or create elaborate multi-camera editing jobs. Premiere Pro training can also be paired alongside training in applications like Audition and After Effects to create more complex final edits of video files. Anyone interested in video editing as a hobby or a career path will want to consider learning Premiere Pro.

• Audition: Audition is a sound file editing program that is frequently used alongside Premiere Pro to add, mix, or alter sound effects and music in a video file. Sound is one of the foundational elements of film, and learning how to mix and manipulate sound is an important skill for a Video Editor. Audition lets users alter sound levels, including speed and volume, remove background noise or add music and ADR directly into a video file. Learning to utilize Audition is vital to a user’s ability to edit videos and produce creative projects. As an added bonus, Audition is also used for editing purely auditory mediums, like Podcasts, so learning Audition can help you find additional work in the editing field.

• After Effects: Adobe After Effects is a motion graphics design program commonly used to create 3D animated assets and special effects for film projects. This tool lets users make large and small alterations, ranging from creating the massive visual effects that theatergoers associate with blockbuster movies to simple computer-generated correction effects like digitally displaying a computer screen. After Effects is often used alongside Premiere Pro and Audition to create the necessary effects and assets for a completed video project. Mastering After Effects and its tools for 3D animation is also an important skill to learn if you are interested in becoming a professional Special Effects Artist, which is one way to build on your graphic design training.

• Adobe Creative Cloud: All of these applications are available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, meaning that they are integrated with one another to help creatives optimize their workflow. A Graphic Designer can build an image in Photoshop or Illustrator and easily upload it to the cloud, where it can be downloaded into InDesign and placed in a page layout. Likewise, it is very easy for video editors to edit files and create assets using After Effects and Audition, then transfer those files to Premiere Pro to easily and efficiently create a completed video project. In addition to their integration, users can purchase a licensing subscription to these services for a significant discount relative to purchasing or subscribing to several different creative software applications separately.

Why Learn Graphic Design or Video Editing?

As creative skills, there are many reasons, both professional and non-professional, that someone would want to learn either graphic design or video editing. Not only are these in-demand career skills, but they are also great tools for hobbyist creatives, aspiring filmmakers or artists, or anyone interested in working in the non-profit or political sectors. Learning graphic design or video editing can pay long-term dividends in terms of lifetime earning potential or personal satisfaction and pleasure.

Embark on a Creative Career

Since visual communication is an important part of everything from entertainment to advertising campaigns to advocacy efforts, Graphic Designers and Video Editors are in high demand across various industries. If you want to find work in an engaging, creative environment, learning graphic design or video editing skills is a great way to prepare yourself for the job search. 

Virtually every industry with a consumer-facing aspect to its business will employ Graphic Designers, even if only to design things like logos and product packaging. InDesign specialists can find work in the print publishing industry, including working at magazine and newspaper publishers. Photoshop and Illustrator are important advertising tools, and designers can find work in-house or as studio artists contracted by various companies. Figma is an important tool for User Experience and User Interface Designers, and since virtually every company is invested in building a web presence, there is no shortage of openings for these professional Graphic Designers.

Video Editing is most commonly associated with the film and television industry, where most professional editors find employment. Video Editing is a respected art form in this industry, so anyone interested in finding work in a creative environment that rewards excellence in editing can aspire to work there. Video Editors are also common in the advertising industry since video advertising is an important part of most marketing campaigns. Video Editors may even find that working in the more limited space of the advertising industry is empowering rather than restrictive to their creativity. Finally, the rise in online content creation has increased the demand for Video Editors as content creators, and new video studios aim to produce the highest quality work possible. 

Find Collaborative Creative Work

Graphic design and video editing are excellent career paths for anyone interested in collaborative creative work. While some Graphic Designers can find solo projects, particularly if they are freelancing or just starting out in their careers, most large-scale design projects are undertaken by teams of Graphic Designers working to create a unified and coherent design across a wide range of different mediums. Graphic Designers will also often consult with one another and provide feedback on each other's work to grow as a collaborative community.

Video editing allows for a slightly different kind of collaborative creative work. While many editors will work in teams of editors collaborating on the same project, editors will often work alongside other creatives to ensure that the finished project is in line with everyone’s desires and expectations. Video Editors will work closely with directors and cinematographers to ensure that the footage is edited in line with the director’s vision, but they will also work alongside actors, artists, writers and producers, all of whom will be contributing to the overall success of the project.

Build a Portfolio or Demo Reel

Anyone looking to find a job in a creative field will need to have the experience necessary to sell themselves to prospective employees or clients. One of the best ways to demonstrate this is by building a design portfolio or demo reel that showcases your talents and abilities. In a professional skills development program, like any of Noble’s certificate-granting courses, students will spend time working on hands-on projects that they can refine into portfolio material that will wow hiring managers and clients. This practical step is very important for turning a creative passion into a creative career, and it is one of the best reasons to enroll in a professional skills development program rather than trying to self-teach creative design skills.

Why Learn Graphic Design?

Graphic design appeals to students interested in producing evocative, rhetorically persuasive visual design projects, particularly 2D traditional projects like posters, advertisements, or webpages. Learning graphic design will have students learning how to use tools like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and they will learn visual composition skills. 

• Visual Composition: To succeed in graphic design, students will need to learn theories of composition, including design principles and ideas such as color theory and typography. Since graphic design is a mode of mass communication, it requires understanding how audiences view and react to certain kinds of design. This can be as simple as understanding how audiences interpret certain colors or as complex as understanding how to juxtapose images next to one another to create new meanings. This will often be something that students pick up through repeated iteration and practice, which is one of the most important aspects of graphic design training.

• Rhetorical Persuasion: Graphic design skills aren’t just used for advertising and product packaging. Visual communication is an important rhetorical skill for targeting mass audiences at once, and learning graphic design skills is a great way to pick up the skills necessary to work in fields that rely on this kind of visual communication. Graphic Designers produce advocacy-driven infographics, posters, and other informational materials for nonprofits, government agencies and lobbying groups, and artists utilize the power of visual design to communicate with their audiences. Students who learn graphic design skills will learn how they can use tools like Photoshop and Illustrator to persuade and communicate with people they will never meet. This also makes learning graphic design a great way to prepare for an artistic and creative career outside the commercial industry.

• Practice, Practice, Practice: Another reason to enroll in a graphic design class is to get more time to practice your artistic skills under the guidance of an experienced instructor. Every artist knows that practice is what allows you to perfect your style and improve your work and that getting regular feedback is an important part of this process. By enrolling in a course that teaches graphic design skills, students will be held accountable for regularly practicing their craft, submitting finished projects, and iterating on those projects with instructor feedback in mind. This makes enrolling in a course a great way to ensure that you are practicing your craft and making strides to improve your skills, which is vital to anyone who wants to build a career in graphic design.

Why Learn Video Editing?

Aside from all the advantages that learning video editing shares with learning graphic design (such as opening the door to creative career paths or teaching visual communication skills), there are some unique reasons to consider learning video editing. Learning how to edit videos using programs like Premiere Pro will teach you a creative skill that is unique in the way that it teaches practitioners to approach the creative process.

• Technical Art Form: One of the reasons to learn video editing as opposed to other creative practices is that video editing is a much more technical art form than most other creative endeavors. While being a Video Editor does allow for a lot of creativity, editors still need to ensure that the cuts are seamless, continuity is maintained, and audio is synced up, among many other small but impactful details. This makes video editing a solid skill set to learn if you are interested in the prospect of a meticulously detail-oriented creative career. 

• Build Filmmaking Skills: Learning video editing can also be productive for students looking to learn the technical processes that make film a reality. Even if you aren’t interested in becoming a professional Video Editor, learning Premiere Pro can give you greater insight into one of the most important elements of film, which is vital knowledge for anyone hoping to find work as a director, cinematographer, film critic, or film scholar. Regardless of how you plan to interact with video-making in your future career, learning the basics of video editing can go a long way to helping you make better and more informed creative decisions, regardless of your role in the project.

• Edit your own Content: More and more creatives are turning to online video platforms to find an audience for their work. With the rise in popularity of YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, creatives have more avenues than ever to produce and release their own video content. However, this accessibility also means that the market has become more crowded than ever before. To stand out, you will want to ensure that your content looks as professional as possible, and one way to do this is by learning professional editing techniques. Even simple edits made from a single shot of raw footage can do a ton to make a video project look more professional, which in turn makes it more likely to engage an audience.