While the specific curriculum will vary from program to program, it is most likely that the course will cover a few general skills. Most likely, you will end up working with the major Adobe Creative Cloud applications for traditional 2D graphic design: Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. These three programs have been industry-standard for decades, and although some have fallen out of favor in certain contexts (InDesign and Photoshop used to be very commonly used in web design projects but have largely been supplanted by dedicated tools), they are still some of the most frequently used applications in the design field. These classes are likely to cover introductory and advanced techniques with all three applications, perfect for beginners looking to develop their skills.
One of the key lessons that you are likely to learn is when to make use of certain applications and how they can be integrated together as part of a larger project. For example, both Photoshop and Illustrator are industry-standard graphic design tools, but they serve very different functions. Illustrator is a vector design tool, meaning that it utilizes lines and shapes as its primary creative build blocks. This makes it ideal for creating images and iconography that can be easily resized, like a company logo that needs to appear on both a branded pencil and a billboard. By contrast, Photoshop is a raster design tool, meaning it uses pixels as its primary building block, making it useful for images that are of a specific size and need significantly more granular detail (you can learn to do things in Photoshop that would be impossible in Illustrator and the reverse is also true).
You will also spend time learning principles and theories of design since the way that you approach any given design project will change depending on the goals of the project, the context in which that project exists, and the needs and desires of the client. These design principles have informed artists for hundreds of years, and it is important to understand them if you want to find success in the field. You won’t need the same level of arts training you’d get in a multi-year MFA program, but you will want to understand the basics of design philosophy, typography, color theory, and other relevant principles of design.
Why should high school students learn graphic design?
Learning graphic design is an excellent way to set yourself up for long-term success in a career in the visual arts, advertising, advocacy, or another artistic industry. A major reason to study graphic design is to set yourself up for a career in the field, which is rapidly expanding as the demand for talented artists and designers rapidly increases. On average, the starting salary for a graphic designer is around $60,000 annually, with opportunities for more advanced professionals to find work as design leaders and even CCOs. Given that graphic design is a mass communication process, any business or industry that has a customer facing aspect to it will employ graphic designers.
Virtually every industry that interacts with the public is going to employ graphic designers at one point or another. Even something as simple as designing a company logo is going to be an involved process that requires a lot of engagement between the relevant stakeholders and all of the different designers involved in the process. This means that there is significant demand for a wide range of different visual design and graphic artistry specialists, particularly those working in a corporate or advertising context. Whether you are employed at an in-house graphic design team, a studio that works with corporate clients, or you work on a freelance basis (either full-time or in your free time), you are certain to be able to find the kind of work that suits your needs.
You’ll also be able to find work in a wide range of different industries. If you work at a design studio, you will be working in the general ‘graphic design’ industry, which means you’ll have a chance to work on a wide range of different projects based on what kind of clients your studio draws in. Other common industries that employ graphic designers include the entertainment industry, which needs to create traditional media advertising for its output (think movie posters, as one example), tourism and event planning (which need to create constant streams of graphic design content for events and websites), political campaigning and advocacy (which aims to use traditional visual design media as a tool of political and social persuasion) and institutions like universities and museums (as they create both promotional and instructive material). This wide range of different industry contexts makes graphic design an ideal skill to learn if you want varied career opportunities that are in high demand.
You can also use your graphic design training to get a leg-up on your college education, both in terms of placement and advancement. Students who spend time in a graphic design summer program will get hands-on opportunities to work on their design portfolios, and they can get personalized support and feedback from professional design instructors. This will help them develop their own personal style and it will give them a collection of materials that they add to their application to design schools. In addition, the process of creating that portfolio will require students to stop and contemplate the decisions that they are making and the reason for those decisions, which can help pay long-term dividends for students who will need to write a statement of purpose or complete an interview about their work and their design goals. In addition, learning graphic design can help students pass or test out of early-level design classes, which will save money and time as you get to the parts of your training that are most valuable and exciting to you.
Is learning graphic design hard?
If you have patience and are invested in creative expression, learning graphic design isn’t particularly difficult at all. What it is is time-consuming because in order to succeed, you’ll need significantly more practice than just what a high school summer program affords you. Like any artistic skill, raw talent is far less important than a willingness to keep practicing and these classes are a good way to get started with that aspect of the field. This means that any time you spend working on your craft, like in a summer course, you will be able to gradually improve over time. Practice is essential to becoming a Graphic Designer, so learning how to start the process early and giving yourself maximum time to practice is a good route to long-term success in the field.
What can I learn alongside graphic design?
One of the advantages of learning graphic design is that it is such a versatile skill set, and it is used in so many industries and professional contexts that you are very likely to be able to pair your graphic design training with other skills to build a robust professional and academic toolkit. For example, if you learn UX/UI design, it might pay to learn JavaScript and other programming languages so that you can build your own websites.
If you are interested in the advertising side of the question, you might want to spend some time learning digital marketing or social media marketing, both of which are also classes that you can take online or in person during a summer seminar at NextGen Bootcamp. These summer sessions will provide students with hands-on support and training, which will, in turn, give them a foundational skill set that they can develop and nurture as they see fit. Combining multiple technical lessons can help you set yourself apart from the crowd, and it can be a good way to build a long-term career and educational program.
