Graphic Design Desire

Since grad school (turn of the millennium) with the encouragement from two of my profs, I’ve been trying to educate myself about graphic design.  It’s been hit or miss, due to time and other constraints.  Also, everything seemed to be a college or certificate courses.  When Cathy Zielske burst on the scene, I was able to learn more from her books and blog posts.  But I always yearned to go deeper. I just didn’t have the time needed to do to the digging to piece together resources for further study.

When I taught web design at a local university in the early 2010s, more books and scholarly articles were published about user experience and design.  Although those resources were focused on creating web sites and web content, they also had general graphic design principles that I could glean. Again, I just needed the time to read, digest, and practice what I found.  But that time was hard to find while holding down two jobs.  And time just got more precious with job and family changes.  I couldn’t do it.

I have the time now that I’m retired.   And I’m still interested in design, looking to improve my scrapbook pages.  There’s also been an increase in the amount of information that can be found online, in books, and in courses that are less technical and software specific.  It’s time to put my student hat back on again.

I’ve completed one course on Udemy related to beginning graphic design. It reinforced some of my gut feelings about design, and brought me the terminology and theory to back up my guts.

I’m in a second course now that uses the specific software I create with — the Corel suite — to tackle modern print design. I’m learning so much about my tool of choice and enjoying the return to print design.

My next Udemy course will be about graphic design in Canva. Not that I’m planning to become a Canva guru. But I’ve found through the first Udemy course that the technology/program does not influence or improve the underpinnings of good graphic design. It’s just a means to display your design knowledge. You could be a crap designer and an Adobe suite expert.

I’m excited about this next phase of my creative life, and putting to practice what I am studying. For example, overhauling the look of this site! But that’s for another day when I figure out more about the modern WordPress experience.