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Have An Interior Design Ambition? A Career Course Could Help!

Are you constantly aware of good visual presentation - perhaps on a website or a brochure - then turn your hobby into a career via a graphic design course. A typical graphic design student will have left school with an art A Level.

However don't rule out the career if you haven't actually done much drawing - a lot of graphic design is now carried out on the computer and so you won't necessarily need to be great at drawing.

Graphic designers can work for large design houses, smaller specialist companies, or as self-employed freelancers working from a studio at home. You can study to degree level at university or opt for vocational commercial training which many view as more useful, really you'll get more prepared for work in the design world at a commercial college than at university. Equally you may decide that you'd like a bit of commercial training prior to attending uni, and you can get that by enrolling on a short portfolio course.

Which Training College Is For Me?

Selecting the best design college and their most appropriate course elements can appear a bit daunting, but there are simple steps to follow.

Check each college out thoroughly, as the quality of course material and teaching does not all conform to the same standard. You'll see different colleges advertising on this page - don't just visit the odd one or two because the more you look at the better your decision process. By Bookmarking this site you can give yourself easy access to it at any time - a shortcut is Ctrl D. As you get more acquainted with the different websites you'll start to understand what you're looking for.

Their own website should be a design statement for any worthy college. The training probably won't be up to much if the website leaves a lot to be desired!

Secondly, are you looking for full-time in-centre training, a part-time course that blends distance learning with college attendance or an entirely home-based on-screen course? Is there a limit to the hours of teaching support? What others items will you need that aren't included in the training costs? Look for testimonials from previous students, and from employers who've taken on ex-students - what was it that impressed them the most?

Working Portfolios

Whether you study at home or in college, you'll need to build a portfolio of your best designs. When the time comes to apply for your first job, the standard of the work you've done so far will be the most relevant thing to an employer. Every plausible training company will feature commercial standard portfolio work in their syllabus, so checkout the standard of the students' work that's displayed on their site.

Adobe Creative Suite

Software skills are taught on graphic design courses, which means trainees must enter college with a good level of computer literacy. You'll predominantly be taught how to design using Adobe CS4 applications such as Illustrator, but there will still be an aspect of print-based design to your training. Design colleges often favour using MACS as opposed to PC's. It's possible to obtain software versions for either though so you should be able to use whichever machine you feel most comfortable with.

To become a graphic designer, you must have good interpersonal skills and the ability to sell your ideas to clients. Graphic design work includes any form of visual communication - even if it's the label on a humble can of baked beans!

Graphic design puts together shapes, wording, colour and imagery in a stylised presentation that at its best communicates a statement for the product it represents.

Creative Design Tools...

Designers have many tools in their arsenal - including colour, texture, composition, contrast, shape, repetition, white space, alignment and balance. Spectacular designs can be achieved when these key principles are adhered to - as many successful corporate campaigns can testify to. Great graphics contribute to attracting, informing and retaining a large client-base - and that's something every business in the land is desperate for!

Professional tuition will turn your aptitude for design into your ability to design. Go for content, quality and a proven track-record.