What is graphic design?
Graphic design is arranging type, images, colour and space so a message gets across, and feels a certain way. A concert poster, a cereal box, an app icon and a brand's Instagram all start from the same decisions.
It's also the foundation for UI design. The type, colour and layout skills you build here carry straight into screens.
Composition: where everything goes
Composition is how elements sit together on the page. A grid gives you structure, so things line up and feel intentional. Then you decide what's biggest, what's close to what, and where the eye should land first.
The principles you'll use every day
These come up in every brief, whether it's a gig poster or a product launch.
- Hierarchy: the most important thing is the most noticeable.
- Contrast: differences in size, weight, colour and space create interest and clarity.
- Alignment: everything lines up with something else.
- Proximity: related things sit together; unrelated things get space.
- Repetition: repeated colours, shapes and type make a set feel like one family.
- White space: empty space is a design element, not a gap to fill.
Type and colour do most of the work
Pick the right typeface and set it well, and a design is half done. You'll learn how type is built, how to pair fonts, and how size and spacing change the mood. With colour, you'll learn palettes, meaning across cultures, and contrast that keeps text readable.
From posters to brands to boxes
The course moves from single pieces to whole systems: a poster, then a brand identity with a logo, colours and type, then packaging you could put on a shelf, then motion graphics that bring it to life.
AI image and layout tools help you explore many directions quickly. You'll learn to use them for that, and to finish the work by hand, so the result is specific and yours, not the average of everything the model has seen.
