Best 13 Creative Courses on LinkedIn Learning (Lynda) for Artists and Professional designers.
Updated: Apr 3, 2022
Discover the Top 13 Courses Every Creative Should Check Out.
If you ever wanted to get into the Creative field and do things like Graphic Design, Cinematography, or Video production as a job or professional career but didn’t have an idea where to start, today, I will show you the courses you need to get your Graphic designer Career launched or boosted with new skills.
Below, you will discover the Best 13 graphic designer courses you need to succeed.
1. Color for Design and Art
Your instructor is Jim Krause, a designer, photographer, and illustrator. He is also the author of 17 books, including Color for Designers and Color Index, part of his famed Index series of design books.
In this course, learn the essential components of color theory in simple language. The training provides clear advice on how to create color schemes based on current trends and the tastes of different target audiences. You will also learn how color can attract attention and affect mood and meaning.
Explore the World of Color and How to apply it in your daily designs and paint jobs to attract attention. Learn how to create your own color pallets to start with. Learn to use Magazines, Websites, Books for inspiration. Art galleries (for those who have the chance to visit) are full of inspiration too, from this inspiration, you can be able to create something with a specific mood and that gives meaning.
In this course, you will also understand the difference between CMYK and RGB colors and when to use each.
What You Will Learn in This Course:
Color Terminology (Vocabulary)
How to Navigate the color wheel (Color Scheme)
Why color value is so important
RGB vs. CMYK vs. spot colors
How to Find the perfect color for your project
Working with grays and browns
How to Build your own color palette
Establishing color hierarchies
Altering color in photos and illustrations (Fixing color problems)
How to use a texture with color
Painting for learning and fun
2. Developing Ideas and Advertising Concepts
Once you have a Client, your next job is to come up with unique design ideas. You don't want your every client to look the same. You want to try to give each client’s design project a unique touch and production detail.
In this course, Craig Smallish takes you through the Ideas development process for various creative scenarios, from assessing the client’s brief and the scope of the freelance design job/contract to sketching your ideas on the paper which is the beginning of the production process.
As some kind of a Bonus, you will also learn to create a descriptive copy (words/sales text) to accompany your visuals and create iteration after iteration of your design.
What You Will Learn in the “Developing Ideas and Advertising Concepts Course:
What is Ideation or Conceptualization?
How to Work with clients
Research (Doing your homework, learn about the Client/Company)
Determining the core values of a product or service
Building the written descriptives
Using search engines to fuel ideas
Creating a rough sketch for your design (commercial) or Animation
Defining the refined sketch
3. Learning Brain Storming
If you want to improve your creative skills, and “think outside the box” as they say, generate more ideas for your next painting, photoshoot, cinematography shot, movie shoot, whatever you want to do, it doesn’t matter, what you need is to generate as many ideas and unique concepts as you possibly can. Use this course to define your creative process.
That is where Brainstorming comes in.
Brainstorming is a method of generating new and unique ideas and sharing them (knowledge) to solve a particular commercial or technical problem, in which participants are led by a director and new ideas are being recorded and reviewed until the team comes to a conclusion.
In this LinkedIn Learning course, you will learn to build on Alex Osborn and his practice in his 1948 book, “Your Creative Power”.Osborn’s fundamental principles bring his original concept into our modern-day creative environments.
You will learn the purpose of brainstorming, how to set up and run effective brainstorming sessions, and pro tips and techniques to use during your idea generation sessions.
4. Story Telling for Designers
The main goal of any design is to send a message to a specific audience in a way that is effective. One of the best ways to make your message effective is by telling a story.
If you are interested in visual storytelling, This course is for you. It doesn't matter if you are a high-level producer or art director, comic books illustrator, or t-shirt designer.
Explore great examples of visual storytelling from traditional graphic design, advertising, uncover the basic elements of the story and learn more about the tools that professional writers and filmmakers use in visual storytelling.
Find the right balance between using pictures and text to make your message more effective.
What You Will Learn in the Course:
How to Connect with your audience
How to Define the structure of your story
Typography and Vector Symbols
Using color to Tell a story
Using personas (Customer avatar)
Creating a brief for your story
5. Drawing Vector Graphics
In this course, join a professional designer and illustrator Von Glitschka as he breaks down the creative process to teach you how to develop and create precise vector graphics. Von’s tips and tricks help you improve your research and ideation skills.
What I learned is most of Von’s courses will help you establish a solid foundation for your design to guide your precise vector building. He even shows you how to use scrips to save time by automating some stuff.
Von also shows you how to present your final designs or animations to clients, addressing the customer/client’s feedback, and delivering the final product.
What You Will Learn:
Research and design thinking
Using a creative brief to define the client’s expectations
Drawing shapes before you build them
Using symmetry to streamline your workflow
Art directing yourself
Presenting effectively using design rationales
Responding to client revisions
Archiving and reusing unused ideas
6. Foundation of Drawing
Get better drawing results by applying these drawing techniques by Will Kemp, an Artist, Teacher, and the Founder of Will Kemp Art School.
“Anyone can learn how to draw. Success comes down to three things:
Shape
Simplicity
Structure
Each chapter in the course is built on these three principles, combining drawing theory and practical examples with worksheets and drawing assignments. You’ll learn about line, value, tone, negative space, and perspective. If you follow along, by the end of the course you will become confident drawing daily.
What You Will Learn:
What you need to draw (Materials/Tools)
Drawing theory
Framing your composition
Using the picture plane
Creating contrast
Using negative space to create more powerful compositions
Creating a form from shadows and light
7. Graphic Design History
Whether you’re curious about the development of design or are seeking inspiration for your own creations, expand your visual vocabulary in this comprehensive introduction to graphic design history. In this course, Sean Adams focuses on the hows and whys of each design movement, detailing the development and evolution of specific styles, techniques, and genres.
Sean Adams has managed the AIGA historical archives — the largest collection of graphic design history in the world. Sean Adams is the chair of Graphic Design at ArtCenter and designs for clients such as Adobe. He is also a founding partner of the noted firm, AdamsMorioka.
What You Will Learn:
Why study graphic design history?
The Arts and Crafts movement
New Typography
The great age of posters
The rise of the corporate identity
Minimalism
Skills Covered: Design thinking, Graphic Design, Design Theory.
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8. Breaking out of a Rut
Stefan Mumaw designed this course to help you identify the type of rut you’re in and its cause, and then break out of it with a series of short-, mid-, and long-term creative nudges. From techniques to get you thinking alternatively to life-changing educational opportunities, the course serves to bust every creative rut, with actionable ideas and encouragement designed to get you back on the path to success.
Stefan Mumaw is the director of narrative strategy at First Person, a story and experience design shop. Stefan has authored six books, the most recent being Creative Boot Camp, a 30-day crash course on creativity. Previously, he authored Chasing the Monster Idea, Redesigning Websites, and Simple Websites, and co-authored Caffeine for the Creative Team and Caffeine for the Creative Mind with Wendy Lee Oldfield. He has spoken at numerous creative industry gatherings over the years and has been known to embarrass himself and those around him if given the opportunity.
Skills Covered: Career Management.
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9. Creating Brand Identity Assets
After designing a brand identity for a client, you’ll need to deliver the final package, including guidelines around using the new logo, color scheme, and fonts. In this course, Justin Seeley, (one of my best instructors when it comes to graphic design software) provides an overview of the process of building and handing over an identity package.
He walks through the core concepts surrounding identity, and how it differs from branding and logos; introduces the assets designers typically develop for clients, including logos, style guides, business cards, and letterhead; and shows how to export the package to the client.
Justin Seeley is a graphic designer and a renowned software trainer in the creative media industry. Justin’s podcasts consistently rank among the top software how-to podcasts on the iTunes Store and his techniques have been featured on a variety of internet shows and digital publications. To date, Justin has authored over 50 hours of instructional content on a variety of digital imaging and design-related topics.
Skills Covered: Brand Identity, Brand design.
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10. Layout & Composition
Layout and composition are the building blocks of graphic design. A strong composition will attract attention, clarify understanding, and engage the viewer whether the project is a print- or screen-based project, a still or motion graphic, a 3D or 2D graphic. This course explains the elements, principles, and tools you will need to create a successful composition and layout. Author Sean Adams explains the elements of layout (from shapes to space), how to use principles such as scale and hierarchy, and teaches how tools like grids, proportions, and color can lead to more compelling compositions.
Sean Adams is your instructor. Sean Adams is the chair of Graphic Design at ArtCenter and designs for clients such as Adobe.
Skills Covered: Graphic Design, Design Principles, Visual & layout design.
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11. Data Visualization
If you need to get across huge loads (big ideas) of data quickly and efficiently, you need data visualization. Data visualization allows you to make the complex simple, the abstract tangible, and the invisible (data) visible with great illustrations. In this course, Bill Shander shows how to understand your data and your audience, craft the story you need to tell, and determine the best visual model and details to use for that story.
Bill Shander is CEO and founder of Beehive Media, an information design and data visualization agency with clients including knowledge-driven organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, the World Economic Forum, Booz & Company, and Harvard University.
What You Will Learn:
Describe the process by which individuals’ interests are incorporated into data visualizations.
Explain techniques involved in defining your narrative when visualizing data.
Identify the factors that make data visualizations relatable to an audience’s interests and needs.
Review the appropriate use of charts in data visualizations.
Define the process involved in applying interactivity to data visualizations.
Skills Covered: Data Visualization.
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12. Data Visualization
If you need to get across huge loads (big ideas) of data quickly and efficiently, you need data visualization. Data visualization allows you to make the complex simple, the abstract tangible, and the invisible (data) visible with great illustrations. In this course, Bill Shander shows how to understand your data and your audience, craft the story you need to tell, and determine the best visual model and details to use for that story.
Bill Shander is CEO and founder of Beehive Media, an information design and data visualization agency with clients including knowledge-driven organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, the World Economic Forum, Booz & Company, and Harvard University.
What You Will Learn:
Describe the process by which individuals’ interests are incorporated into data visualizations.
Explain techniques involved in defining your narrative when visualizing data.
Identify the factors that make data visualizations relatable to an audience’s interests and needs.
Review the appropriate use of charts in data visualizations.
Define the process involved in applying interactivity to data visualizations.
Skills Covered: Data Visualization.
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13. Universal Principles of Design
Design is full of unspoken rules and theories that, when applied, can dramatically improve one’s own design. Luckily for you, this course documents them all. Universal Principles of Design, based on William Lidwell’s award-winning books, illustrates one design principle, ranging from the tried and true (the 80/20 rule) to concepts that you may not have ever heard in a design context. These principles are critical to successful design — no matter what the discipline.
This course is for anyone who creates, designs, engineers, or illustrates. You will learn invaluable lessons that can take your work to the next level.
You have two instructors, William Lidwell and Jill Butler.
Professor William Lidwell lectures at Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston.
He also serves as director of innovation and development at the Stuff Creators Design Studio in Houston, Texas. He earned his BA in psychology from Texas State University and his MS in interaction and instructional design from the University of Houston–Clear Lake.
Jill Butler is founder and president of Stuff Creators Design, an interaction design consultancy.
She has held teaching positions at the University of Houston, Lone Star College — Kingwood (formerly Kingwood Community College), and the Texas Printing Education Foundation, where she taught courses in graphic design and graphic technology. Jill is author of Universal Principles of Design, a best-selling design book translated into more than twenty languages, and has designed the covers, layouts, and typography for more than a hundred published novels and children’s books. And for fun, she owns Monster PBJ, a Houston-based food truck serving gourmet peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.
Skills Covered: Design thinking, Product design, Design theory.
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Conclusion
These and more courses on LinkedIn Learning will get your skills and Career Kickstarted. It doesn’t matter what career, niche, or industry you are in. Whether you are a creative or business professional, looking to learn new tech skills, or just to help you land your first job opportunity, LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) got you covered.
What Courses do you recommend for creative designers and professionals?
