So you want to get into design. Whether you just dropped out of law school or are starting to realise how mind-numbingly dull your desk job is, the fact is that you have a little free time on your hands this year. You want to learn a skillset that not only potentially pays well but allows you to have an outlet for artistic expression and make a visible difference in the world. Well, you’ve come to the right place.
Being unable to go to design school and getting a formal education is nothing to despair about. Many successful artists are self-taught and teaching yourself a trade or a skill is easier than ever now. One can find absolutely everything on the internet, but like in anything else, there’s usually more fluff than matter. We’ve put together 6 resources you can’t go wrong with if you don’t know where to start. Put together, the following courses and books will set you up for success and direct you towards developing an aesthetic that is both appealing and reflects you as an artist.
- Picture This – As a designer, you are in the business of creating pictures, communicating through visuals. In order to say, or rather show, exactly what you want your viewer to see, you need to be careful about what the purpose of each component of your image is. The first question to ask then must be – “What is a picture?”. This question is marvellously answered by children’s writer and illustrator Molly Bang in Picture This. A picture is an extension of our own world. Much like the things we see in everyday life, our attention is drawn by objects and occurrences that signify different meanings in different contexts. See how the evocativeness of the colour red and the sense of stability or uncertainty we get from certain shapes are actually primal responses with surprisingly commonsensical explanations.A short primer on why the colour and position of each component of an image affects us the way they do, this little gem is considered a must read for aspiring designers for good reason.
Image from Picture This by Molly Bang
- Thinking with Type – Typography is to words like music is to lyrics. You will realise the importance of type very soon as you walk down the design path. Pictures may speak thousands of words but mostly communication can’t be open to interpretation, we need to get exactly what we want to say across. And in the age of information overload, we can’t rely on our audience to read what we want them to. A font must be a statement of identity. Coherence in fonts used across a website, book or product is important in creating a brand image. Flashy, lively fonts work in tandem with attractive design to capture the attention of audiences in advertising and elegant, modern serifs make sinking into your favourite Russian novel a joy. Imagine reading War and Peace in Arial.Ugh.
Thinking with Type gives you an excellent primer on using type intelligently in your work. The writing is witty and will help develop your intuition about appropriate typefaces and formatting. Not only does the book tell you what to use, it also illustrates why things sit well in places and why they don’t by explaining the evolution of typefaces in a historical context. You also know the pitfalls you can make, and avoid common mistakes as shown in the various – “type crimes” sections dotted throughout the book.
Image from Amazon.
- Creative Workshop – A design book stands out from its peers by being not only beautiful to look at and read but also inspires the same sort of innovation through its challenges. This self-contained design course is not just easy to read and actionable for beginners but also manages to have some nuggets of gold for advanced professionals. Once you’ve got the basics down with the help of the other resources on this page, Creative Workshop will be an absolute godsend. It will help you achieve two things that will be essential to your career as a designer. Firstly, it will force you to finish projects within a set time period. Second, the completion of each challenge will add an item to your portfolio. And out of 80 challenges included in the book, it suffices to say that you’ll come out with at least a handful of really good pieces to showcase your talent to potential employers.
Image from Amazon
- DesignLab – Enrol in comprehensive online design courses offered by Designlab where you’ll be aided by a mentor. Designers who’ve worked with big players such as Twitter, Airbnb and Dropbox critique the quality of the submissions you make as part of the course. One of the courses offered on the website is a primer in design, while others cover more specific aspects like UX design A session a week with a leading designer in the industry. If you want the fastest track to getting the design basics down pat and are willing to accept all expenses to that extent, then DesignLab is the way to go.
- HackDesign – Don’t despair if you can’t shell out stacks of moolah for your design education. The best things in life are free anyway. True, nothing beats getting one-on-one coaching from experts, but for all you struggling artists, HackDesign is the next best thing.
- Featuring free to use links and resources curated by top web and product designers, HackDesign has you learning through doing. Touching on every aspect of the subject with 50 lessons ranging from typography, colours, UI/UX, mobile and web design, and getting design jobs, completing the HackDesign course will give you a solid foundation to build upon. They also have a handy toolkit of the best software to use for an application.
- Tutsplus – A middle ground between HackDesign and DesignLab is Tuts+, now owned by Envato. Tuts+ has a much larger selection of tutorials than both the former websites combined, and plenty of free content for beginners too. You can learn at your own pace with step by step tutorials that teach you through example projects. Tuts+ has been around for a decade now and is regarded as a reliable, quality resource in the design community. Their courses include over 2,40,000 tutorials and 900+ hours of video instruction on graphic art, web design, coding, the whole gamut. And while access to all of these resources can be had at the price of a plate of chhole bhature and raita a day, you can set yourself up for success with just the free material.
This blog can be addictive. We know you must be craving more so here’s more:
This article was written by Mickey Thibault. If you want to contact him for feedback, send him an e-mail.
