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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Fundamentals of Graphic Design by California Institute of the Arts

4.8
stars
18,076 ratings

About the Course

Graphic Design is all around us! Words and pictures—the building blocks of graphic design—are the elements that carry the majority of the content in both the digital world and the printed world. As graphic design becomes more visible and prevalent in our lives, graphic design as a practice becomes more important in our culture. Through visual examples, this course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape... foundational skills that are common in all areas of graphic design practice. I don't just want you to watch a video of someone talking about design, I want you to MAKE design! If you want to be a designer you have to be a maker and a communicator, so this course will offer you lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty with exercises and with more practical projects. At the end of this course you will have learned how to explore and investigate visual representation through a range of image-making techniques; understand basic principles of working with shape, color and pattern; been exposed to the language and skills of typography; and understand and have applied the principles of composition and visual contrast. If you complete the course, along with its optional (but highly recommended) briefs, you will have a core set of graphic design skills that you can apply to your own projects, or to more deeply investigate a specialized area of graphic design. To succeed in this course you will need access to a computer. You can complete this course without one but it will be tougher. Access to, and a beginner's level knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite programs, such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign will help you, especially if you want to complete the optional briefs....

Top reviews

EJ

Sep 5, 2021

I had a lot of fun in this course. I learnt some extra bits of information related to graphic design and I think it's a great start for beginners as well as good practice for intermediate and experts!

CS

May 9, 2018

An ok course for beginners. A bit too basic for someone who has already had experience in design, but is great anyway cause it breaks things back down to the simplest parts to help you remember roots.

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4451 - 4475 of 4,634 Reviews for Fundamentals of Graphic Design

By 飞飞

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Aug 16, 2016

实用，新颖，～～～

By Mustafa R

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Jun 23, 2020

Alright

By Dulce A

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Mar 14, 2016

Good!!!

By April R E

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Mar 16, 2021

Thanks

By Vengatesh A

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Dec 2, 2020

Good..

By Anike k g

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Jul 29, 2020

nice..

By Loga S G 1

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Jun 6, 2020

Useful

By Richel F

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Dec 12, 2018

Great!

By GUNAWAN, A B (

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Jun 29, 2020

good!

By Fernando A O

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May 19, 2025

bien

By Karen S G M

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Nov 8, 2024

none

By Abrile F

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Oct 23, 2024

Good

By GOPIKA K (

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Oct 13, 2024

good

By Ariadna A

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Oct 11, 2024

good

By Abdul- M O

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Nov 17, 2023

Cool

By henid y

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Feb 15, 2023

good

By Ayan M

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Mar 3, 2021

good

By Manisha

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Sep 11, 2020

good

By DINESH K K

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Jun 14, 2020

good

By preksha m

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May 20, 2020

good

By Invader

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Jan 21, 2022

UwU

By Baher A

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Oct 14, 2022

ر

By Amir B

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Feb 14, 2019

N

By Rebecca W

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Feb 9, 2022

This was a great overview of the fundamentals, useful, interesting assignments and a lot of opportunity to practice. It was highly enjoyable and I like how the professor chose to explain things. Knocking off two stars for two reasons:

- The peer review system is broken. I rarely received useful feedback. In general, I think a paid course should have a professional give professional-grade feedback, but in the absence of that possibility, the least they could do is place a minimal word limit on the review sections so that people have to type more than one word to qualify as a review. In addition, people who don't pay attention to the rubric mark down your assignments and can screw with your grade as a result

- The quality of this course was not matched by the next in the specialization, which is Intro to Typography. So people who signed up for this course and then pursued a specialization based on the quality of this course will likely be let down by the very next course in the track. Intro to Typography is totally self-guided, is not at all dense with content (could be done in two weeks EASILY), and is almost completely grade reliant on peer reviewers, which as I pointed out, are of questionable quality. There is really no quality control for the work you complete in this course and it should be free as it currently exists.

By 翠花

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Oct 5, 2016

The last assignment caused me CONFUSION. I mean, due to the unclear assignment requirements, we cannot review composition for composition's sake. For example, I did use two squares as the assignment asked, but I changed the transparency of them, so they form a new square when overlapping. And people think I used three squares and thus not following the instructions. And many people used a small circle and a large circle putting at the center vertically to form a scale composition, and you have to give them 3 points because they followed the instructions, but they actually did not do much in terms of composition. Though I got 3.5 scores by two people ( not very bad）, I'm still frustrated, and I hope the assignment requirements could be clearer.