Do you wish you could do more fulfilling work? Have you always dreamed of a way to make money and earn a real living off of your creativity, but struggled to piece it all together? Are you interested in design, but not sure if it’s an option for you? Do you ever feel like you missed your chance to have a creative career?
You CAN have a rewarding (and high-paying) career in design, even if you didn’t go to art school. You just need to learn the skills and industry tools that can help you focus your creative energy. And that’s exactly what you’ll learn in the Skillcrush Visual Designer Blueprint.
Visual designers are digital artists and strategists.
You probably associate the term “graphic design” with movie posters, party invitations, book covers, business cards, and more. But what about visual design?
Visual designers are the creative visionaries behind everything from your favorite websites and apps to brand logos and ebook covers. They are the graphic designers of the digital world we live in, and they play a crucial role in designing the online experiences we interact with every day.
Working primarily on digital projects (rather than print), visual designers hone the strategy and visual identities of brands by designing color, typography, and layout using industry tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
If you’re an imaginative, creative, visual person and love sketching, drawing, pairing colors, illustrating, and calligraphy (or you just have a history with coloring books and macaroni necklaces) you’re going to love working in visual design!
Eager to launch an exciting career in tech?
Come check out our WordPress Blueprint Package for a discounted bundle of the classes you need (including the Visual Designer Blueprint!) to supercharge your career path.
I’m a visual designer on TED Conferences' small in-house design team. I create visuals to help communicate TED’s initiatives to its global audience. My tasks range in scale from designing a piece of custom album art for a thematic playlist of talks, to developing an identity system and related collateral for a TED conference.
I love in-house design work. There’s something satisfying and challenging about problem solving within very well-defined parameters, particularly when it’s for a really great brand like TED.
I studied Communication Design at Parsons in New York. I’ve always been a bit of a bleeding heart. Ultimately, my line of work is to communicate and clarify a message, so I need to believe in that message in order to do my job well. This has led me to working mostly in-house with non-profits.
You’re telling a story with the work that you do; make sure it’s one that you want to be heard!
The Visual Designer Blueprint is 3 months of practical instruction that includes everything you need to get started the right way: structured lessons, hands-on exercises, master classes with industry experts, useful cheatsheets, and friendly instructors to support you every step of the way!
Your Blueprint is structured around three core classes:
Learn the fundamental concepts of visual design in the digital age including user experience and user interface design, color theory, and typography. Once you learn the conceptual foundations of visual design, you’ll put it into practice using the world’s most popular design tools–Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign–to create professional-quality design projects you’ll be proud to show potential employers and clients.
YOU WILL LEARN: UX / UISitemapsWireframesColor TheoryTypographyPhotoshopIllustratorInDesignUXPin
This class begins Monday, July 10th.
Now that you have all the fundamental concepts and tools of Visual Design under your belt, it’s time to deepen your knowledge by creating your first, full-fledged brand identity. In this class you’ll learn how to build a brand from the ground up, just as you would working as a Visual Designer. You’ll walk through every step of a professional design workflow and, in the end, you’ll have a cohesive brand, including logos, icons, and a style guide to show for your efforts.
YOU WILL LEARN: Branding StandardsTarget AudienceStyle GuideLogosIconsPhotoshopIllustratorInDesign
This class begins Monday, August 7th.
A Visual Designer’s job is to bring a brand’s identity to life through its many customer touch points. Now that you know how to build a brand, it’s time to take that brand from concept to digital reality! In this class, you’ll learn how to layout and design a professional sales page that accurately communicates a company’s brand to its target audience.
YOU WILL LEARN: Intermediate UX/UILayout TrendsUser TestingTeam StructuresSales PagesUXPinPhotoshop
This class begins Monday, September 11th.
What previous knowledge do I need to take this course?
None! You don’t need to have any prior coding or design experience to take this blueprint. As long as you’re pretty familiar with your computer and how to use it and are comfortable on the web, we’ll teach you the rest.
What exactly is visual design?
Visual design covers a broad spectrum of design, with an emphasis on visual communications and creating a holistic design that travels well across multiple online and print platforms. Visual designers use aspects of web design (UX, UI, and user testing) and graphic design (branding, identity design, look and feel, typography, color, space), to create a solution that fulfills the goals and purpose of a design project.
The Visual Designer Blueprint is perfect for absolute beginners and anyone interested in design, creativity, and the flexibility of being able to work for yourself or an established company!
I work full time. Can I fit this course into my busy schedule?
Absolutely! We recommend setting aside about an hour a day to engage with the course materials and your classmates and instructors, but you can shift this around depending on your weekly schedule.
Some of our students can’t devote an hour every day to the course but can study for longer periods of time over the weekend — This is totally fine too, and our material is always available for you when you need it.
What if I get behind in the course? Will the lessons still be available to me?
Yes, absolutely! You’ll continue to have access to the course well beyond the “official” course dates so you can catch up or review whenever and whatever you like.
Really, there is no “behind” at Skillcrush. We 100% support you in going through the material at a pace that feels right to YOU.
What kind of computer or software do I need for this course?
Nothing fancy! You just need a computer with access to the web, of course. You should be able to stream Vimeo videos and download / upload materials like images and documents.
You don’t need to have any special software before you start the blueprint, but we’ll be introducing you to both UXPin and Adobe Creative Cloud during your first class. Both Adobe and UXPin offer free trial periods, as well as monthly and annual payment plans (available for both Mac and Windows). You’ll get everything you need to make your very own professional-quality designs!
Do you provide any printable materials I can access?
Yes indeed! We have several very popular cheatsheets that we tell our students to print out and carry with them or tape up around the house. You’d be surprised how much you can actually learn by just looking at them for a few minutes a day!
This Blueprint is for you if:
This Blueprint is NOT for you if:
When does the course meet?
The course doesn’t meet at fixed times. All the lessons are online, and you have access to them 24/7 so you can study whenever is best for you.
Throughout the course, we send you an email every weekday morning to help keep you on track, and then you’re welcome to work on the lessons whenever it fits your schedule.
The only “scheduled” course events are the circle chats, live group office hours and master classes. But these are all optional, and, if you can’t make the scheduled time, you can read a transcript of the circle chat, ask questions in the online student community or watch the recording of the master class later. So, there’s always a way to fit the Blueprint into your life!
How do office hours work?
We offer live office hours using Google+ Hangouts. Group office hours give us the chance to help as many students as possible. And we’ve found that, since students tend to have similar questions and challenges, you’ll learn a lot from hearing answers to other students’ questions too. That said, you’ll also have the chance to ask your own questions from the instructor and make sure you get the answers you need as well.
I’ve been looking at a bunch of other online bootcamps and programs and they are all thousands of dollars. How come you are so cheap?
Our thoughts exactly!? Did we say $399? We MEANT $3999!
In all seriousness, we price our blueprints according to what we need to charge in order to be a profitable company, provide the level of service that we believe YOU ALL deserve, while also keeping the price point accessible to our audience.
We can’t promise it will always be $399, but for now it’s a price that works for us and works for our students. And you have our 100% money-back guarantee for the first 30 days of your Blueprint.
So stop asking questions and just be glad you found us!
How does the online student community work?
We use Google Groups for our online student community. It’s completely free, and we’ll send you an invitation to your Blueprint’s own group before your course starts.
In your student community, you can meet your classmates, ask questions about the lessons, get feedback on your work, share tech resources and much more! Plus, it’s a great chance to get to know other people who are just as excited about tech as you are and to start networking and making great friends and career connections.
Is Skillcrush only for women? I’m a guy and want to learn.
We welcome men at Skillcrush as well and can’t wait for you to join us too! In fact, about 25% of our students are men. Skillcrush is a supportive community of folks from all kinds of backgrounds, professions, countries and yes… genders! :). So, please join us – and bring a friend!
Can I really learn enough in this program to get a job?
Well, tell us, what job exactly are you looking for? CTO at Apple? Ok, probably not. Visual Designer at an agency? YES YOU CAN!
We don’t place students in jobs (yet) and we can’t guarantee you work. But many of our students have gotten full-time work using the skills they learned at Skillcrush, and even MORE have used their new skills to do freelance, project based work that has earned them thousands of dollars on top of their full-time salaries.
The best thing for you to do is to be crystal clear about what job you want and what skills and experience you will need in order to get it. If you can tell us that, we will do everything in our power to help you get there.
And if you can’t answer those questions yet, no worries, we’ll work with you on that TOO.
Our Blueprints come out to around $5 a day. Less than HALF the price of comparable programs – and 100% more fun! You can make 3 monthly payments of $199 $149 or a full payment of $499 $399, whatever fits your life and budget.
** Discount ends June 5th, 2017! **