9 Easy Ways To Teach Yourself Graphic Design — Jordan Prindle

1 | Research Graphic Design History

The importance of knowing design history is often under-valued.

The value of history, in general, is often under-valued. I know I wasn't exactly thrilled about my history classes back in high school.

But, understanding history, helps you understand why graphic design is used the way it is.

For instance, I bet you didn’t realize that the first designs date all the way back to ~38,000 BCE. Historians believe that the first cave paintings were created to illustrate stories.

Today, our draw towards visual communication only grows. Studies have proven that 65% of people are visual learners, meaning they understand and grasp a concept better when it is visualized in front of them. - Source That is why icons are such powerful communication tools for all types of business owners.

This demand for visual communication dates as far back as human existence, which highlights just how important understanding design history is to understanding designs use and relevance today.

There are a ton of great ways to research design history, but I love graphic design books.

2 | Research Graphic Design Terms

Before you begin learning how to create graphics that convert viewers into loyal readers, you'll need to learn a few basic design terms.

The graphic design world has its own terminology, just like any field of study. Knowing and understanding those terms is a vital first step in teaching yourself design.

Once you begin watching tutorials or reading blogs, a lot of basic design terms will be used that you may not understand, which is going to make it a lot harder to complete the tutorial.

Here are a few basic terms you should know to get you started:

TYPOGRAPHY TERMS

Typography: is the design or selection of letterforms to be organized into words and sentences.

Body Copy: refers to the main group of text in your design.

Leading: is the adjustment between lines of text to improve legibility.

Kerning: is the adjustment between two individual letterforms to improve legibility.

Tracking: is the adjustment between all letterforms in a text to improve legibility.

Legibility: references how easy it is to distinguish between the individual letterforms.

Orphans & Widows: refers to the word(s) that appear at the top or bottom of a column of text. You typically want to avoid orphans and widows in your design.

Alignment: refers to how you organize elements on the page.

Pull Quote: a brief, attention-catching quotation, typically taken from the main text of an article and used as a subheading or graphic feature.

COLOR TERMS

Color Palette: a collection of colors that is used in an illustration, brand or design project.

Hue:a gradation or variety of a color

Tint: is the process of adding white to a color to make the hue brighter.

Shade: is the process of adding black to a color to make the hue darker.

Monochromatic: A color scheme built out of only one color, including tints and shades of that color.

Analogous: A color scheme built out of three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel.

Complementary: A color scheme built out of two colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel.

Triadic: A color scheme built out of three colors equally spaced around the color wheel.

CMYK: Or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, is a color model that is used for print purposes.

RGB: Or Red, Green, and Blue is a color model that is used for on-screen purposes

Pantone (PMS): Pantone Matching System is a standardized system of colors for printing. Every Pantone shade is numbered, making it much easier for people to reference and identify exact shades of color.

PHOTOGRAPHY TERMS

Opacity: The degree of transparency an element has. The lower the opacity, the more transparent an element is.

Resolution: The amount of detail an image has. Generally speaking, the higher your resolution, the better your images appear.

Stock Photo: A professionally shot photograph available online for licensing. Stock photos are usually used when you can’t hire a professional photographer.

Rule of Thirds: The design theory that if you divide your image with two vertical and two horizontal lines, the areas where your lines intersect will become focal points.

These are just a few of the design terms, you may want to know. If you are interested in a more specific type of design, like brand design, web design, or packaging design, you’ll want to research some genre-specific terms.

3 | Utilize Graphic Design Blogs

There are countless graphic design blogs and vlogs that detail the basics and beyond.

Blogs are a great resource for beginners because, not only is the content free. But, credible blogs are kept updated for their readers to teach new trends, software, and techniques.

I think graphic design books are an amazing resource, but blogs are an exceptional resource that can be overlooked.

The issue, is finding credible sources.

Luckily for you, I’ve rounded up a few great resources to help you out.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

BRAND DESIGN

Don't waste these great free resources. You'll learn a lot of the basics in a way that won't feel like school and won’t cost you a penny.

Interview: Self-Taught Illustrator Mia Charro Talks Learning Digital and the Power of Positive Thinking

I find few things as delight­ful as ani­mals wear­ing flower crowns. For years, illus­tra­tor Mia Char­ro has imag­ined what cats, dogs, sloths, and even hip­pos would look like adorned with col­or­ful blos­soms placed atop their heads. I’m not the only per­son who finds this series endearing—it’s gained a lot of pos­i­tive atten­tion for her work. (You can find it on Insta­gram and Society6!)

I spoke to Mia about the ongo­ing series and the path she took to becom­ing an illus­tra­tor. Spoil­er alert: she was­n’t always an illus­tra­tor! Learn more about how she shaped her career and how the pow­er of pos­i­tive think­ing is at the heart of much of her imagery.

You’ve said before that you did­n’t attend art school, and that you devel­oped your skills as an illus­tra­tor and design­er at your first job. Can you explain more about this journey?

Of course. Ever since I can remem­ber I’ve always liked to draw. I illus­trat­ed my own sto­ries and I filled up the school’s tables with doo­dles, plants, and robots drawn with a pen­cil. But I nev­er thought about work­ing with it. After col­lege I decid­ed to take a web design course and, among oth­er pro­grams, I learned how to use Pho­to­shop. I dis­cov­ered the won­der­ful world of Con­trol + Z, which allowed you to solve mis­takes, use lay­ers and how they fused togeth­er… It was new ter­ri­to­ry that was unwrap­ping right in front of me. So, I spent lots of time at home exper­i­ment­ing, I even wrote a poet­ry book with dig­i­tal collages.

What did you learn for your­self and how did you even­tu­al­ly tran­si­tion into illustration?

Lat­er on and thanks to this course, I start­ed to work in a com­pa­ny that designed online cours­es. In order to make these cours­es, they gave us instruc­tions that were the expla­na­tion of the text and the descrip­tion of an image that had to go with it. We had to look for that image or a sim­i­lar one in stock sites, which took a very long time, so I con­clud­ed that it was much quick­er to make a draw­ing in Adobe Flash. My boss­es liked the idea and that’s how I start­ed to cre­ate a whole lot of vec­tor illustrations.

Many times, we had some free time at work and I ded­i­cat­ed those hours to draw and learn how to use oth­er pro­grams like Adobe Illus­tra­tor; with patience and a lot of prac­tice. The most valu­able les­son I learned around that time was that, even though I was a lit­tle tired of mak­ing stock-like illus­tra­tions (peo­ple in meet­ings, shak­ing hands, walk­ing down the city, talk­ing, at a work table…), they allowed me to devel­op my tech­nique a lot. So, “you nev­er know when some­thing bad turns into a blessing”.

When I had the idea to write sto­ries, illus­trat­ing them came nat­u­ral­ly. Writ­ing and illus­trat­ing at the same time allows you to dive deeply into the cre­ative process.

What is your process for cre­at­ing your work digitally?

The idea comes first, like a flash, some­thing you want to draw and com­mu­ni­cate. I hon­est­ly do sketch­es on paper very rarely. I tend to work direct­ly on the com­put­er, and I fix shapes and change col­ors dur­ing the process. Truth is I save a lot on paper and materials