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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Fundamentals of Graphic Design by California Institute of the Arts

4.8
stars
17,005 ratings

About the Course

Graphic Design is all around us! Words and pictures—the building blocks of graphic design—are the elements that carry the majority of the content in both the digital world and the printed world. As graphic design becomes more visible and prevalent in our lives, graphic design as a practice becomes more important in our culture. Through visual examples, this course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape... foundational skills that are common in all areas of graphic design practice. I don't just want you to watch a video of someone talking about design, I want you to MAKE design! If you want to be a designer you have to be a maker and a communicator, so this course will offer you lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty with exercises and with more practical projects. At the end of this course you will have learned how to explore and investigate visual representation through a range of image-making techniques; understand basic principles of working with shape, color and pattern; been exposed to the language and skills of typography; and understand and have applied the principles of composition and visual contrast. If you complete the course, along with its optional (but highly recommended) briefs, you will have a core set of graphic design skills that you can apply to your own projects, or to more deeply investigate a specialized area of graphic design. To succeed in this course you will need access to a computer. You can complete this course without one but it will be tougher. Access to, and a beginner's level knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite programs, such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign will help you, especially if you want to complete the optional briefs....

Top reviews

AR

Apr 17, 2016

very good introductory course. i enjoyed the assignments, they are not overwhelming, easy to start, and the optional ones offer great opportunity to dig little deeper into graphic design fundamentals.

GA

Aug 20, 2018

Very interesting, I liked the format. Easy to follow, nice excercises. It's actually good to cover the basics of design, even if you are not an absolute beginner, and especially if you are self taught

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176 - 200 of 4,398 Reviews for Fundamentals of Graphic Design

By Faria M

Jun 21, 2021

I love this course as it starts from the root of graphic design. I have learned alot from those videos and by submit those assignments. I thought leatning fundamentals of graphic design would be so complicated, but it is so easier than my thought. Every part was broken down so simple and now I think that I have a clear definition of what garphic design is. I more confident to move forward with graphic design.

By Sreng S

May 6, 2020

The course is useful for beginner to explore the creatively in working on graphic design. This is the fundamental course that all students in any field of studying should take in order to enhance their regular designing since sense of having good image is essential is the future. However, it would be more nice if the course has more preparation material like powerpoint or doc that we could review or practice.

By Anna T

Jan 14, 2020

Thanks for a very interesting course Fundamentals of Graphic Design.

Information is broken into small pieces and it is very convenient. All the information that you provided was important and necessary. I did not hear anything superfluous or unnecessary. I easily managed to complete my homework. Your team perfectly thought out the program of this course! Thanks to all! (Sorry for possible grammatical errors)

By Etienne M

Apr 15, 2020

Just finished the course, and it's been a blast. Not what I expected maybe, but definitely what I needed to get to the core foundations of graphic design. It helped me understand graphic design principles & "science". I got to build on my skills and creativity with exciting accessible exercises. And now, I know where to look next to go forward on my learning journey! Thanks CalArts and Michael Worthington :)

By Maria P

Mar 13, 2019

For someone who has always been a little bit afraid of Graphic Design for lack of completely knowing what it was about, this was a great course to tackle those fears while really understanding that to start entering the world of Graphic Design the only thing one needs is taking the time to learn the basic concepts, try thinking about them and then apply them. Thanks for a really great and eye-opening course.

By Vandana c

Jun 21, 2019

The content of this course is really crisp and clear . Good examples are used to explain the concepts. This course has really made me believe that i have a hidden sense of art and creativity. I have learned to use various tools to learn and practice typography, sketching, water color art, logo and pattern making. I would highly recommend this course to people who wants to learn the basic of graphic design.

By Helene C

Oct 12, 2017

This course is a great starter to Graphic Design and its basic principles. The tutorials are clear, well paced and effective. The assignments are an opportunity to manipulate those principles and to create composition with much depth and control. I definitely recommend this course to novice and to intermediate that need to strengthen their skills. Peers reviews are also important so everyone can be active.

By Rhonda C

May 17, 2019

Great instruction with plenty of practice. I got a good start on my very first graphic design portfolio. This course gave me the perfect introduction to graphic design and left me with the desire to continue. I just recently have become more interested in art and design. It might be a little late in life for me but I am a lifelong learner. I want to learn more about this fascinating artistic concept.

By Alabún'mí J (

Oct 31, 2017

Professor Worthington's videos were absolutely fantastic! I took this class seeking refuge from the disorganization and disappointment of a competitor's course. Now I wish I had come here first, like I intended in the first place. This course does such a great job of explaining theory while also giving plenty of opportunity to put that learning into action. It's really got me thinking like a designer now!

By Nimra

Oct 20, 2022

Firstly I'm thankful to my Allah for giving me this oppertunity and than I'm thankful of this platform. It's a fantastic course on Graphic design specialization for beginners and professionals too. It's my fortune that I'v got a chance to do this course. A big Thanks to all my Teachers who guided me and help me to achieve this course cirtificate and helps me to learn new skills. Once again thanks a lot.

By Elizabeth R

Dec 4, 2019

I enjoyed this so much that I'm going to do more courses. It was presented extremely well and the way the content flowed made it easy for me to follow along. At first I didn't bother submitting assignments, but when I got into it more I went back through them all again and decided to submit them because it all became so much FUN. No hard work here - just pure joy in learning and experimenting. Thank you.

By Babita N

Feb 22, 2018

Excellent course for beginners or people who are just experimenting with Graphic Design. The instructor is clear and concise and the assignments are interesting.

In peer-assignments same person might evaluate all of your assignments which kind of defeats the point which, I think, is variety of opinions. That can also get irritating/discouraging if the reviewer does not care to leave useful feedback.

By Akbota N

Aug 22, 2019

This course allows students to 'get in touch' with some of the basic Graphic Design concepts. I liked assignments a lot, especially because they provided guidelines, but did not very limit what you can submit, and also reviews from peers were very helpful.

I am not sure if those with experience will enjoy this course, as it is very basic and minimal, but maybe reviewing a base theory could be useful.

By Trinity C

Apr 1, 2017

Fantastic course, gives a concise yet specific survey of all the basic graphic design skills you will need, presented in such an interesting and fun manner and at the perfect pace for beginners and more skilled designers alike. Thank you to Dr. Worthington and CalArts for creating this course and making it available to students worldwide who aren't able to relocate to Southern California just yet.

By Viktoria H

Jun 21, 2020

Loved the course - informative and thoughtful. It was quite evident that a lot of effort was put into making this course accessible and understandable by everyone, regardless of previous experience. However, I would have wished for more hands-on assignments to be compulsory/required - I believe every graphic designer-to-be should have more practical activities and get encouraged to complete them.

By Kamila P

Apr 18, 2021

The course was really interesting and gave me a lot of knowledge about a variety of graphic design aspects. A good basics course for a start, to organize your theoretical knowledge, but also a lot of practical assignments that make you immediately use the knowledge in practice. I recommend the course and I recommend to take part in all the assignments, even (or especially) the optional ones.

By Charmayne J B

May 25, 2020

This class is amazing! It's very easy to follow for people like me who have absolutely no experience with Graphic Design. I like how they break it down into small segments and then go through it until it makes sense and comes together. I plan on taking the entire Specialization because i'm so excited to learn all there is to learn about Graphic Design and really use this for a career change.

By Rehema K

Oct 5, 2016

I am a Communications professional based in Nairobi, Kenya and have repeatedly seen the importance of the role of graphic design within my department at work. This, coupled with an interest in design, led me to sign up for the course. Getting an introduction to some of the theoretical aspects in this course was extremely worthwhile. I look forward to completing the specialisation. Thank you!

By Atif U

May 15, 2023

The Fundamentals of Graphic Design course by CalArts on Coursera is outstanding! The instructors expertly taught the basics of design, covering typography, image making, shape & color, and composition. The hands-on assignments helped me apply these concepts and fostered creativity. This course is a transformative learning opportunity for aspiring graphic designers that I highly recommend!

By Ann O

Jul 29, 2017

I really appreciated the hands-on nature of this course, I think it helped me to learn the material better. The assignments in this course were very challenging, and great opportunities for putting everything we learned in the lectures into practice. The lectures had a lot of concrete examples to clearly demonstrate the ideas being presented, and ideas for how to complete the assignments.

By Swati S

Jul 22, 2021

The lessons are very well planned, small and compact yet informational. The design of the videos is superb. It encourages you to focus on the narrative and never distracts from it. I enjoyed taking it and plan to follow up with the other courses in this specialization. I do wish I could do the last project as well, even if I couldn't submit it for grading as I have taken the free course.

By Jhanan N

Nov 10, 2015

The class It's really clear and simple.

Every week you can put the information to work on the assignments, that in my case made me put my creativity out there, have fun, discover my abilities and create really cool stuff.

I learned with the recommendations of my classmates and I also learned by review them. I feel I learned a lot on a few weeks.

I really loved this class, very, very much!

By Kyra W

Jan 26, 2023

I really enjoyed this class. I have had several years of graphic design work experience with no extensive training. This course was a great foundation with the very basic knowledge I have with composition and it's elements. I loved learning about all these elements, even though some seem very simple to begin with, but I am now seeing clearly how they work together to make great design.

By Raphael F K

Jul 12, 2021

The content and instruction is rich. It is simple and truly delivers the concepts in an easy to understand manner. For an introductory course, I enjoyed it thoroughly especially the exercises that encourage you to practice and therefore enhances the learning. The required peer reviews also encourage you to think and analyse submissions and also allows us to improve our own learning.

By Ellen C

Jun 29, 2020

Great basic overview for anyone new to the field and keen to learn. Perhaps a bit easy if you have prior design experience - this course was fantastic for beginners. The marked and optional assignments gave a good practical experience to learn how to use design programs, while the informative videos explained the history and background theory of what works. Really enjoyed this course!