12 Ways To Learn Design Skills Online

Learning : Good Grades : : Education : Job

When you write an entrance examination, admission test or recruitment paper, the examiner test you on what you have learnt in academia. Then come in the line your education which is tested during time of Personal Interview / Group Discussion etc. Competition is stiff in any field, for 1 seat in a college, there are 100s of applications and for 1 job vacancy in a local city, there are thousands of applicants. You need to impress your interviewer, to get first call from a recruiting agency or admission office. Skills are important to excel in career and life. Designing is one such skill though which you can impress your admission officer and interviewer alike. Learning right skill sets may send you ahead in the row. Learn Design Skills, improve your portfolio and excel in career.

Whether you are a novice in making designs (painting canvas, selecting right fonts for your CV or setting your thesis in right format) or a pro in doing so, here are 12 online tools to learn design skills and improve. I am sure using these tools you will truly lean new things and improve on your portfolio

#1. HackDesign 

Learning is awesome with this great website. There are many lessons to learn like Typography, User Experience, User Interface, Product Design, Interaction Design and a lot more. Learning with HackDesign is easy. Just log on to website, locate and click on View All Lessons Tab. The robot will take you to sign up page. Provide email id. You will receive One Design Lesson Every Week.

#2. Lynda 

Lynda.com now a LinkedIn company is a website of video tutorials. This website provides training at Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced level. Also they provide tutorial “Appropriate for All”. Lessons are written around various Design software e.g. Acrobat, Adobe, Apple, Keynote, Photoshop, PowerPoint, iPad, InDesign etc. You can choose for free subscriptions and depending on your experience can move for paid subscriptions. In my personal opinion Lynda is awesome for learning skills. Tutorials are written by experts.

 #3. Tuts+ 

The Tuts+ holds innumerable tutorials to work around Vector, Photoshop, and Illustrator etc. Also in the website you can find how to tutorials and learn design skills in the easiest possible way.

#4. UDemy 

Both Free and Paid courses are available in this website. Learn Photoshop, Web Design, Game Design or any. Many design courses are available and suitable for everyone’s need. Also, you can give to website like W3School.Com, Code.Org etc.

5. PicMonkey 

The PicMonkey is online Photo Editing tool. Pick a photo, from your desktop, recolor it, change borders, shades or insert new font. Mess like a monkey with your photos to get the things done. Final output will be awesome.

6. Canva.com

This website has loads of free templates to create infographics, email headers, social media banners, or business card. Though pretty perfect for professionals, if you are on job hunt, just head to Canva.con to design your first Visiting Card. You can chose for free template or buy one for more personal look. I use Canva as I am not good with mixing right colors and in my experience it’s great for learning design skills. It’s awesome for beginners especially those poor in colors.

#7. Google Fonts 

Fonts plays pivotal role in making a design truly impressive. May be your PC holds 100s of fonts but Google Fonts are worth try. You can do experiments with Google Fonts mainly on 4 parameters; thickness, width, slant and font size. Many scripts are available.

#8. Tiff 

Right selection of typography is pretty tough. When you are struck between two fonts rely on Tiff. This app tells the difference between the two. However, you are the best judge always.

9. Adobe Color CC

Great visuals come in great colors. You need to create an Adobe Id by providing your valid email address on the website.

#10. Pixlr

Edit your photos online with the help of Pixlr. You can chose from more than 600 covers, different font styles, font sizes and whole lot of color combinations.

#11. Pinterest 

This is social media for visuals. When you a created design online share it on a Pinterest Board and ask for feedback from your friends and public here. Feedback is Fodder for improvement. You will learn a lot.

#12. HowDesign

This is a Forum for Graphic Designers. You can share your art here and get feedback from people like you, me and the experts.