How to learn graphic design without going to college
Disclaimer: I think this is harder than going to college.
Graphic Design is still a young field of study. Some people say it started in the second half of the 19th century, while some others say it turned into a formal field of study only after WWII.
Anyway. For now, all you need to know is that Graphic Design is a relatively new discipline compared to others.
Although graphic design teaching is somewhat a new thing, there have been some institutions that pushed the limits of Graphic Design beyond what people thought possible.
From the original Bauhaus to today’s Art Center College of Design, there have been tremendous efforts to get to produce a predictable program for learning Graphic Design. And boy, those efforts worth it.
The downside of Art and Graphic Design specialized education is very simple: it’s too damn expensive, and it doesn’t scale well.
I know, I know. You can get into an affordable Art School, but that option doesn’t cut it for me. And if you’re reading this, most likely you feel the same way about it.
For people like us, the idea of learning Graphic Design on our own looks appealing.
Don’t get me wrong; going to college is the safest way to go. And it also has some advantages over going on your own:
- You have a structured learning plan, a syllabus.
- You won’t have to do all the research on your side. You can follow the instructions, and that’s it.
- You make connections with other people in the industry.
- You get your work critiqued by professionals with many years of experience.
- And, in the end, you get a certification that says you’re a Graphic Designer (?).
Ok, maybe I’m not the right person to talk about why college is excellent. And that’s because I don’t think it is for some things.
If you list down every “advantage” that Art Colleges offer, you can find a close (or even better alternative) that will help you save $20.000/term or more. Let’s do it with the same advantages we have above:
- You can go to the website of your favorite Art College and check their curriculum. Here, try with Art Center.
- If you don’t feel good doing research on your own, you can hire a private design tutor who guides you. Many college professors already take side gigs as private tutors — the same guidance for way less money.
- Let’s face it. The whole “networking in college” thing is a joke. If you can socialize, there’s a plethora of communities, events and things you can leverage to “build your network.”
- Specialized critique is the hardest thing to find outside of the academic environment. But again, we have options. You can get into private design communities on Facebook, Slack or Discord. And you also can access specialized feedback and design critique by enrolling in high-quality courses and seminars.
- Regarding the certification, most courses and seminars offer them. But the reality is that in a job interview, what matters is your work, period.
About being “self-taught”
I’m not particularly eager to refer myself as a self-taught designer because, of course, I learned from somebody else. But that’s the word you use when you mean that you learned something without having to go to college for it.
It’s not a secret that I’m not a big fan of our current education system. But I still think that going to college is the safest way to get an education.
It just happens that sometimes I don’t feel like playing safe.
If you can relate to that and you’re willing to self manage your education, here are the four things you need to have to make the most out of the “self-taught” path:
- Discipline: this part is self-explanatory. In college, it is easier to show up every day because you can get punished for no doing it. But when you’re in charge of your own education, no one punishes you for skipping classes or straight up abandoning the whole thing. Being “self-taught” requires an enormous amount of discipline — kinda Shaolin monks level of discipline.
- Genuine curiosity: you will most likely not be under pressure to have your knowledge tested in a traditional way. But that can work against you if you are not a committed person. To keep yourself organized and to study subjects in the right order, you will need to be genuinely interested in Graphic Design.
- Socialization skills: in college, the environment prompts you to make friends and connections. If you go on the “self-taught” way, making connections becomes more an active task than a taken-for-granted.
- Some accountability mechanism: one cool thing about college is that you can compete (in the right way) with your friends and classmates. Stuff like that helps me stay accountable for my study habits, so I encourage you to find something that keeps you accountable.
Setting up our curriculum
Now that you’ve decided to learn Graphic Design without going to college, the next step is to make a curriculum that suits your specific needs and objectives.
For doing this, you’ll need some organization-system-management-something. We’ll go with Notion this time.
You’ll also need a baseline to design your curriculum. You can check the syllabus of a nice college, or you can watch two of the most helpful videos about learning Graphic Design on your own:
Curriculum for Self Taught Designers — The Futur
How You Can Learn Design Without School — The Futur
After having the baseline, you can start setting up your Graphic Design curriculum in Notion (or your go-to organization method).
Let me show you how does it look like in Notion:
The first thing is to set a workspace where you can mess with pages and subpages as you like. I have a workspace only for Graphic Design education with the four main things I want to be great at: essentials, identity design, web design and motion design.
Now you need to nurture those subpages with smaller components to help you go through the full syllabus. You can use checkboxes for this. Check this out:
I research and take courses and specific seminars for each of those components. Always in order. And when I feel I know my stuff, I move to the next one.
Remember that you need to practice along the way. I recommend investing in good courses with access to private communities so you can get feedback and make relationships as you learn.
Then, when you finish al the components, I do the same thing but in the macro. I move from the essentials to identity design, for example.
I also make a list of books about each topic to complement what I learn from seminars and courses — totally recommended.
The best part of using Notion for this is the fact that you can get as specific as you want with your pages and subpages.
That’s it. After you have a curriculum, the only thing you have to do now is following it. You are allowed to go as slow or as fast as you want. The only thing that matters is to stay consistent and disciplined.
Self-directed learning is hard. But I promise you it is awesome once you get the hang of it.
If you made it until this point, I thank you with all my heart, and I want to give you a small present. You can clone my messy Notion Page if you want to learn Graphic Design or if you know someone who is thinking about it.
