Become a Professional Graphic Designer

Explore five universal principles of visual design: organization of information, alignment of objects, rhythm, contrast, and whitespace to create visually pleasing layouts for graphic design.

Learn to organize information in layouts by grouping related content, creating visual order, and guiding the viewer's eye from what it is to when, where, and how much it costs.

Explore how alignment uses left, right, and center alignments and strong guiding lines to bring order to content, avoid chaos, and guide the viewer.

Set the design's rhythm by repeating visual elements—color, font, lines, and icons—to create consistency and unity across the layout. Emphasize intentional variation, balance repetition with simplicity, and avoid arbitrary choices.

Learn to use white space and negative space to let your designs breathe, improve readability, and create clean, organized compositions.

Cultivate visual interest and guide layouts with contrast—dark vs light, large vs small text, and bold vs plain elements to highlight the most important information.

Evaluate real-world designs to identify the most critical information and give it the biggest emphasis. Compare successful and failed layouts to learn how to communicate clearly and efficiently.

Identify the design’s message and purpose, define the target audience and desired emotions, then choose fonts, colors, and visuals that support the communication.

Learn the essential typography terminology, from font versus typeface to font families, letting, kerning, and tracking, with practical explanations and in-software examples.

Explore serif, sans serif, script, and decorative typeface styles with practical examples like Times New Roman, Georgia, and Century Gothic, and learn about font resources and licensing.

Learn to establish a concise typeface hierarchy by selecting a small set of fonts that reflect the design message, then build harmonious font combinations for headings and body text.

Explore how color communicates mood and guides viewer perception, using red, yellow, blue, and their mixes to build a cohesive palette that reinforces your design message.

Build a warm, cozy color palette that supports your design message by using a base color with color guide tools to explore monochromatic, complementary, and triadic schemes.

Explore color spaces by examining rgb and cmyk, understand additive versus subtractive models, and see how these spaces guide on screen design and print workflows.

Explore imagery that reinforces your design message by sourcing photography, textures, and icons from free, commercially usable resources with clear licensing and copyright considerations.

Explore the difference between raster graphics, which use pixels, and vector graphics built from mathematical shapes. Raster is resolution dependent and loses quality when scaled; vector remains scalable.

Explore tools of the graphic design trade, including Photoshop for raster photo touch-ups, Illustrator for vector logos, Dreamweaver for web design, InDesign for print layouts, and Acrobat for interactive PDFs.

Explore alternatives to industry-standard Adobe tools for raster and vector design, including open-source and browser-based options, to address cost concerns and industry attitudes.

Explore essential web design tools and software. Test across major browsers, work with code editors for HTML and CSS, and compare CMS options like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

Discover how hypertext markup language (HTML) provides page structure and cascading style sheets (CSS) handles styling, and why hand coding by hand isn’t rocket science for designers.

Compare getting a graphic design job versus freelancing, and learn to differentiate through specialization (logo, branding, mobile, interface design), basic coding, and end-to-end project management to land work.

Build a standout portfolio with self-made projects and an online site with contact info; land paid design work by avoiding free gigs, using contracts, and a three-part payment plan.

Explore online design communities such as 99designs, Startup Weekend, DeviantArt, and Behance to join design contests, showcase your work, and collaborate with other designers.

Explore dribble dot com, pttrns dot com, and site inspirer dot com to keep your creative batteries charged and spark ideas for web design gallery, business cards, and brochures.

Explore how to become a professional graphic designer by mastering alignment, white space, rhythm, typography, color, imagery sourcing, and tools like raster and vector editors, and building a portfolio.

Explore the difference between raster and vector graphics, learning how raster uses pixels and is resolution dependent, while vector relies on math and scales without quality loss.

Explore common raster graphic file formats in photoshop, including psd, jpeg, gif, png, and tiff, and learn how each preserves layers, color, transparency, and sharing potential.

Explore a quick five-cent tour of the Photoshop interface, covering menus, the options bar, the toolbox with keyboard shortcuts, color swatches, and panels, then learn to customize the workspace.

Customize the Photoshop interface by rearranging panels and docking groups, then save your own workspace for quick access. Switch among presets like essentials, painting, and photography to match your workflow.

Master creating new documents in Photoshop with customizable dimensions, units, resolution, color modes, and presets; learn to manage documents as tabs or floating windows and use keyboard shortcuts.

Master zoom and navigation in Photoshop to work efficiently, using the zoom tool, spacebar pan, keyboard shortcuts, and fit-to-window and 100% views for precise edits.

Explore how Photoshop's history panel enables multiple undo by tracking edits and applying filters with snapshot points. Use keyboard shortcuts and history options to rewind and restore earlier states.

Resize images in Photoshop using the image size dialog, set units, lock aspect ratio, resize copies to avoid overwriting originals, and cover cropping and resampling.

Crop and straighten photos using the crop tool and crop frame, apply the rule of thirds grid, align a straight edge, and rotate to finalize.

Learn to use the canvas size command to add workspace to an image without resizing it, by selecting a new document size, anchor position, and extension color.

Learn to revert to the last saved version, then use free transform to resize, move, rotate, and center an image in a new web document using pixels.

Master the fundamentals of selections in Photoshop, using the rectangular marquee tool to create precise areas, refine with marching ants, zoom with spacebar, and constrain shapes with shift and alt.

Practice elliptical selections by mastering circular and oval tools, watch the marching ants, and adjust with the space bar and shift to create centered selections for copy, paste, or filters.

Subtract from and add to selections in Photoshop using elliptical and rectangular marquees. Use option/alt to subtract and shift to add, shaping donuts and washers.

Learn to transform selections in Photoshop using the Transform Selection tool to refine rough outlines, rotate, resize, and align odd shapes like washers, rectangles, and circles for precise results.

Learn to work with floating selections: move and layer selected content, duplicate selections with alt/option drag, and understand how de-selecting edits pixels and places content on the image.

Learn to create color-based selections with the quick selection tool in Photoshop, painting selections, adjusting brush size, and adding multiple objects for copy and paste to another document.

Learn to combine Photoshop selection tools with the free transform command to rotate, scale, and move a floating selection (marching ants), preparing for layers.