Graphic Design

Eliza Lynch

I am a recent marketing graduate and I am looking to start a evening graphic design course. Would any one be able to provide me with any feed back on good courses, the best soft ware for designing advertisments etc etc?
Thank you in advance for any help that you can give me.

forbairt

Can't recommend a design course ...

What I would say is download the 30 day trial of Adobe Photoshop from the adobe site and start playing with it.

Decide what you'd like to do and figure out what you want to do from tutorial sites ...

http://psd.tutsplus.com/

Practice Practice Practice!

p

Buy some good 'intro to graphic design' books too. Nothing worse than seeing someone who learns photoshop but not the basics of actual design.

Eliza Lynch

Started a course, so I think it will help me get started. The Teacher/graphic designer who is running the course wants us to draw, develop a scrap book and basically get creative so I think this is a better start than jumping straight on a comp. Plus he is showing us exmples and giving us sites to look at so I am very happy with it. Eventually we will start work on Computer based projects.
Thank you all for your advice I will definately be looking in to your suggestions also, it all seems very exciting.:D

goodcheer

hi, do you mind me asking what course you found in the end?
i'm trying to find a part time one in dublin too

Eliza Lynch

No Prob, I got one in Limerick Senior College.
Its a night course, Fetac level 5.
A lot of project work tho something every two weeks, its a 12 week course.
We work with photoshop which I have never used before. I think it depends on each course tho so they might not all use photo shop may illustrator etc.
Hope this is helpful

enol

Hi Guys, if you want to get into graphics design, apart from the obvious creative ability, the industry standard is Adobe CS2/3/4, which is InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop, and Dreamweaver, Flash & Fireworks for web design. There are more courses in these than you can shake a stick at. A good way to find what employers in the industry are looking for is to go onto www.creativeireland.com and check the jobdesk for jobs offered in the 'graphics' section. You'll prob find most are looking for InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop as the very minimum.
Having a background in marketing I think will serve you well though Eliza, as a lot of graphic design has a commercial end, so applying the rules of marketing to your work should help you towards more commercially effective design, if commercial design is the are you want to get into.

Thats my tuppenceworth, I hope its of help to you, no doubt there will be someone along soon to pick something I've said and tell me how wrong I am... :rolleyes:

Enol (13yrs in the design industry & design agency owner)

looksee

You do need to learn a page layout program too. I am a Quark fan, but the Adobe one is just as popular these days I think. You cannot design a complete ad (usually) in Photoshop - its for images and the odd bit of creative text. For all the rest you need a page layout programme.