Graphic Design Courses

Graphic Design is a subject area that covers a number of disciplines centred on visual communication.

Commonly, Graphic Design courses involve the combination of visual images, signs and symbols with lettering – or typography - to communicate ideas, messages and meanings in a variety of contexts.

The understanding and application of layout and typography are key elements in Graphic Design. It is used in a huge range of applications, from book and magazine production to website design, advertising, web design and packaging design.

Graphic designers work with a variety of tools and media which include traditional art materials and computer software packages. 

Increasingly, there is a certain blurring in the distinction between Graphic Design, Multimedia Design and Illustration, with some overlap between the skills and the tools used in each area evident in graphic design courses online. However, with the Interactive Design Institute’s online graphic design course, UK students and international students are given a thorough grounding in graphic, media and digital disciplines.

The Interactive Design Institute’s graphic design course provides the successful student with comprehensive training in all the key areas of this subject and unlike other online graphic design courses, offers the student the opportunity to work to a series of “live” briefs.

A Graphic Design degree can see graduates moving straight into employment upon completion of their qualification. Graduates can work in both the private (e.g. PR Agencies, publishers, design agencies, studios) and public sectors (e.g. Museums, local Authorities, schools, colleges and hospitals) working in a range of related disciplines such as visual communications, advertising, publishing and creative media production. Employment can be found on a freelance basis as well as within design agencies.

Typical job opportunities after graduation would be Graphic Designer, Animator, Illustrator, Production Designer and Multimedia specialist. Graduates may initially start out on the production side as apprentices, realising work as part of a team working to a client brief, but may progress to working as creative directors or on the business and management side of the industry. Additionally, they may set up their own agencies or work on a freelance basis.