I’m not into design school bashing. I think design education is fairly good in most countries with a tradition of graphic design, in my case Switzerland. Getting a formal education is probably the best way to learn the basics and acquire a good sense of design through theory and exercise.
However, there are things that you will not learn in design schools, at least in most of them. In my opinion, the main thing that is overlooked in graphic design school is the business side of design. This includes a range of topics that we will check out in this post.
How to start a graphic design business?
On the design side, freelancing will not make your life much harder than being an employee. Getting out of design school, you will not know how to do a budget for a project, handle client relationship, or to manage your taxes, among other things. On Lynda.com, you can learn how to start up your freelance business, or even learn about business in general.
Staying ahead of new technology
Design software changes all the time, making it hard for a full-time designer to keep up with new technology. Things got even worst once Adobe started to release its software in the cloud. Lynda.com keeps up to date with design software and provides you with online courses that will make it much easier to stay on top of new software features. The platform offers classes about Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and much, much more.
Learning to design with open-source technologies
This may have changed since I was in design school (and I’m getting a bit old), but at the time open-source software wasn’t even a topic for designers. Nowadays it’s getting more popular, but all the student work I see on Behance is made with good old Adobe software. It is possible to follow some course to make your working process open-source on Lynda.com.
And much more…
Lynda.com isn’t like Zombo.com, but you can still do pretty much anything you want on their site, with nearly unlimited course for a very limited price. So why not take a free 10 days trial?
About the Author
Mirko Humbert
Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.
