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If you’re stuck in a job you hate and have dreams of becoming a designer and working in a creative role that fills you with excitement daily, the road to entering this completely new industry can feel daunting. Making a major career shift late in life to follow your passion is scary. Not only is it sometimes difficult to know where to start to learn about an expansive field like design, but it can also feel risky, especially if you’re working a secure job.
Luckily, you’re not alone! According to a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker changes jobs two times every four years during their 20s and 30s, driven by a desire to follow their passion, improve work-life balance and gain a stronger sense of fulfillment in their work. Additionally, over 2 million Americans quit their jobs every month, driven by a lack of fulfillment and recognition for their work. Thankfully, becoming a professional creative is now more accessible than ever because of the numerous educational resources available.
However, with so many resources out there for learning design, how do you choose the perfect method that fits your life? Rest assured, there is something for you. Whether you’re a high-school student getting ready to graduate or have been working in another career for 40 years and are looking for a major change, the right education exists!
Regardless of the type of design education throughout history, one of the most consistent things emphasized is the importance of learning from experts. Expert-based one-on-one learning is proven to be more impactful than learning by yourself and has been taught for thousands of years. Michelangelo himself, and most other painters throughout history, apprenticed with an established artist (Michelangelo apprenticed with Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio). Many acclaimed modern designers did not attend traditional schools but instead learned by immersing themselves in design and finding a teacher to mentor them. For example, Stefan Sagmeister (the founder of global design agency Sagmeister and Walsh) started his design career by working on layout and typography for the design team of an Austrian magazine called Alphorn, long before receiving a formal design education.
Stefan Sagmeister of Sagmeister and Walsh (View large version)
Let’s return to the present. With so many options available just a few mouse clicks away, how do you decide which option is the best fit for you? And how do you ensure you’re getting feedback and critiques from experts that will help you quickly and efficiently build up your skills. We know that the options can feel overwhelming, so we’ve put together a list of the best ways to learn design according to your personality, budget, lifestyle and personal goals.
Before you read the rest of the article, we recommend answering the following questions first (write your answers down):
Once you have answered those questions, everything else should fall into place.
If you’re the type of learner who absorbs things best when you’re in a real classroom surrounded by teachers and other students, and assuming you have the luxury of going to a classroom full-time, you’ll want to consider an in-person design education. The two main ways to do this are via a traditional design college or an intensive bootcamp.
Parsons School, one of the most renowned design colleges in the world (View large version)
If you have the budget and time, then a formal education at an accredited design school is still one of the best ways to become a designer. Not only will you spend years learning the fundamentals and practicing with modern design tools, but you’ll also be constantly surrounded by students who are just as passionate as you and by teachers with decades of experience in several industries. Top Universities and Learn How to Become both offer a list of the best design schools in the world, and Niche lists the best schools in the US.
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If you don’t like your job and are looking to move to a more fulfilling career as quickly as possible, then an in-person bootcamp might be the best bet for you. In-person bootcamps come in many shapes and sizes, but they generally include 40+ hours of weekly classroom instruction, as well as frequent group assignments, one-on-one sessions with an assigned mentor, and great job placement opportunities once you complete the program.
General Assembly holds in-person design bootcamps around the world. (View large version)
Many bootcamps allow you to pay up front or take the course for free if you agree to pay them a fixed percentage of the salary from your first post-bootcamp job! Some of the best-reviewed in-person bootcamps are run by General Assembly and Shillington. Course Report has a full list of in-person bootcamps.
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Finally, one of the most traditional ways to become a designer historically has been to enter into an apprenticeship on a design team at an established company. While apprenticeships can be a bit more difficult to find these days, many companies are still willing to teach young designers via hands-on experience, similar to an internship. And while apprenticeship opportunities are easier to find if you have at least a bit of experience or have done some design education on your own, if you’re able to secure a position, it can be one of the most effective ways to learn quickly. You might have more luck finding an apprenticeship (or internship, as they are more likely to be called these days) at a large company with established HR and recruiting teams. Smaller agencies and studios are likely looking for interns who can immediately contribute to projects with little to no hand-holding. There’s no better way to learn the real day-to-day skills of a designer than by working alongside professionals at the height of their careers.
Apprenticeship provides an opportunity to learn design in a real-world environment. (View large version)
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Quitting your job to attend a bootcamp or a full-time program at a university isn’t a realistic option for most people. Luckily, a wide array of options cater to people who prefer to learn at their own pace and who don’t have a big budget. These alternatives still let you work through a structured curriculum built for those who are trying to build a career in the design field, and many of them even feature one-on-one components.
Schools such as Bloc and Springboard have been paving the way for online bootcamps. Their curricula largely mirror those of their in-person counterparts, the difference being that you work from a laptop instead of spending 40 hours a week in a classroom. Course Report has a full list of online bootcamps.
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For many people, a full-time design education might be too much, for a variety of reasons. Luckily, many design schools have built lighter-weight courses that allow you to learn design at your own pace and still get the benefit of periodic one-on-one feedback from mentors.
If you want to learn with a mentor, there are a few great options that pair curriculum with periodic mentorship sessions. Skillcrush is an awesome resource for anyone looking for a part-time education. It will hook you up with projects, periodic feedback sessions and frameworks to help you learn design and accomplish your goals. Thinkful has its own part-time design program for people looking to learn at their own pace.
On the other hand, if you prefer a totally self-paced course, with no mentorship, then services such as Treehouse have hundreds of courses covering every aspect of the design world, from design fundamentals to freelancing. These courses allow you to go through a preplanned “track” at your own pace, complete with projects, online communities of other students and great customer service. However, one-on-one mentorship is still crucial, regardless of which online platform you use. If you decide to learn via a service such as Treehouse, which doesn’t offer mentorship, then we’d suggest setting up periodic mentoring chats with outside services that let you schedule individual video chats with design mentors whenever you need some feedback or advice.
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If you’re the type of person who has very specific goals and doesn’t want to waste any time learning unnecessary skills to achieve those goals, this could be the option for you. There are literally thousands of websites, resources and platforms online designed to empower the true self-learner, and they come in all forms. They’re also, for the most part, incredibly cheap (or free)! Note that most of the resources in this section focus on traditional lectures and videos, rather than mentor-led projects. If you go down this route, you’ll need to come up with your own projects and hold yourself accountable to keep practicing as you go!
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera have paved the way for affordable education online. These services take real university courses and rebuild them in an online environment. By taking these courses, you will be receiving almost the same education as people enrolled at universities.
Skillshare offers thousands of classes to learn design at your own pace. (View large version)
Skillshare and Udemy are two of our favorite marketplaces for online courses. Anyone can create a course on these platforms, but their teams monitor submissions to ensure quality. You can also read reviews from thousands of students who have already taken these courses to ensure you’re making the right picks.
YouTube is perhaps the most extensive repository of design resources available anywhere, and it’s free. Check out this list for some suggestions on great design channels to follow. While YouTube has millions of videos on every aspect of the design world, it unfortunately doesn’t help you figure out which videos to watch and in what order. We’d suggest finding a great book about the fundamentals of design, and supplementing it with YouTube videos on specific topics whenever you want more in-depth explanation of a concept.
Finally, there are thousands of other resources to teach yourself design skills, from blogs to individual online learning websites to podcasts. If you’re a savvy Googler, the skills you can learn are limited only by your imagination. It can be hard to know which websites are reputable and which aren’t, so be sure to check out a website’s social pages to see what sort of community it has before diving too deep into it.
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Last but certainly not least, we want to cover perhaps the simplest way to learn design: by teaching yourself! This is similar to the unstructured online platforms discussed above, but many modern designers have never even taken an online course on Coursera or a similar service. In all honesty, all you really need to do is download Adobe Creative Cloud (and Sketch if you’re an aspiring product designer) and start playing around.
For this route, YouTube will be your best friend. The beauty of the entirely self-taught route is that you can truly design an education 100% tailor-made to you. Want to land a freelance gig as a logo designer in the next two months? Great! You can create a laser-focused YouTube playlist of logo design tutorials and concepts. There are literally millions of tutorial videos online describing how to do the most specific and niche tasks in design software, so the answers to your questions have most likely already been asked and answered. In some ways, you can think of YouTube as an automated teacher, because you can get an answer to any question you have within a few seconds.
For the self-taught route, focus on connecting with other aspiring designers and finding a mentor (as we mentioned in earlier sections), because ongoing feedback is one of the best ways to ensure that you can turn basic skills into deep expertise. If you’re able to find like-minded designers and are committed to learning skills by yourself, you can go as quickly as you’d like. Being scrappy and resourceful is a skill that many employers will love, and if you’re able to show them that you went down a self-taught route because you know what you wanted to achieve and knew you could get there more efficiently by designing your own education, you’ll be in great shape!
Learning design completely on your own is becoming increasingly popular and feasible thanks to platforms such as YouTube. (View large version)
Having reviewed the different ways to become a designer in the modern world, you might still be wondering which option objectively gives you the best chance of landing a job in the design industry. The answer totally depends on your timeframe, budget and learning style. If budget and time are no matter, then attending a two- to four-year full-time program at a design university is an incredible way to build a deep set of design skills that will increase your chances of launching your career. Spending several years learning something every day is undeniably the most effective way to become an expert in something.
On the other hand, most people don’t have the luxury of going back to school for several years, in which case we’d recommend finding a bootcamp (either in-person or online) that fits your schedule. Spending three months fully immersed in design and being accountable to a teacher and other students for assignments and projects is the second best way to develop design skills quickly. However, after finishing the bootcamp, you’ll have to continue investing yourself in design. Employers are sometimes skeptical that a bootcamp can give aspiring designers a strong enough foundation to be an effective designer in an actual job setting, so you’ll need to prove your passion and work hard to stand above the competition once the bootcamp wraps up. Spend several hours every day learning new skills, reading books and working on projects directly related to the kind of job and industry you want to work in. Outside of a traditional college, learning from a teacher for several months in a bootcamp and then continuing your education on your own (with the periodic help of a mentor, if possible) and never slowing down is the best way to demonstrate to employers that you’re a serious candidate who’s ready to invest everything in your new career.
So, now that you have a good idea of the types of design education at your fingertips, get out there and find the perfect one for you! If you set your mind to it and immerse yourself fully in the creative world, you’ll be able to learn the skills necessary to build a career in design, no matter which educational route you go down. And look out for an upcoming article on how to find a mentor to help you progress as a new designer, regardless of which educational route you choose.
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