With so many new tools available for editing images and video, it can’t be too long before we start teaching elements of graphic design as a core competency in school. Until then, design is still something most of us have to seek out on our own.

In my experience, graphic design is a field in which you sink or swim based largely on the quality of your portfolio. This means it’s possible to become a professional in the field without necessarily having to go back to school. I did this myself over the last few years, but some recent developments have made it easier than ever to teach yourself design on a budget. Here’s what I’d do if I had to do it again today.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Price: $50

The hardest part of trying to learn graphic design on my own was first getting my hands on a copy of professional-level tools. At the time, Photoshop alone would set you back almost $1000. The entire Creative Suite would probably have cost more than the computer you’d run it on. I ended up talking someone in the graphics department at work into letting me borrow an old copy of Photoshop when the department upgraded, but today, that wouldn’t be necessary.

A few weeks ago, Adobe announced the Creative Cloud, a new subscription based model for their tools. From the literature on the Creative Cloud site, in
a few weeks it will be possible to get your hands on full versions of ALL of Adobe’s CS6 tools for just $50 a month. This is a huge deal for anyone
wanting to learn or use these tools on a budget. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign…finally professional level tools are affordable for everyone.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Lynda.com

Price: Basic Subscription – $25, Premium Subscription  - $37.50

Once you get your hands on the right tools, though, you still need someone to show you how to use them. Enter Lynda.com.

Lynda.com is a huge online library of training videos for hundreds of modern tools. They have entire courses by experts in all kinds of things from Twitter to Microsoft Word to Adobe After Effects. The best part is that for the price of just $25 a month, you can have access to ALL of their videos. Watch as many as you want as many times as you want. And for just a little more a month you can get access to exercise files so you can follow along with the videos as you watch.

Lynda.com already has tons of videos ready to go for Adobe CS6, so you know the information is up to date. And they have courses that can take you from
beginner all the way up to advanced skills.

I taught myself Photoshop using YouTube videos and other stuff I found online. But then I found out about Lynda.com and used it to learn Illustrator and
InDesign. I highly prefer the structured content and video quality at Lynda.com to any other method.

Lynda.com

Required Reading

Price: As much as you want to spend

There’s one more essential piece of the puzzle for becoming a graphic designer. Knowing HOW to use the tools is one thing. Knowing WHAT to do with those
tools is something completely different. In order to learn that, you have to expose yourself to as much design theory and examples of good work as you
can. You can get a good amount of that just browsing the internet these days, but to really succeed you need to study. That means hitting the books and then practicing what you learn by trying to reproduce good works yourself.

I’ve found that most public libraries are lacking when it comes to design texts, so I’m gonna recommend you use the rest of your monthly budget to
actually buy some design books. I constantly want to refer back to mine so I really prefer to own them anyway. Here are a few suggestions to get your
collection started.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams

Graphic Design: the New Basics by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips

Univeral Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler

Visual Language for Designers by Connie Malamed

Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type by Kimberly Elam

Everything by Edward Tufte

If your intention is to become a presentation designer you need to read everything by Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds. (If you haven’t already.)

[Image Credit: SeemingLee]

Art.com, a leading art and decor service, recently released their first iPad app, artCircles. The app was designed by Hot Studio.

The app is a lot of fun to play with. You can browse all kinds of artwork by color, by keyword, or by collections curated by some of today’s leading creatives from artists to designers to musicians.

The interface is a lot of fun, too, letting you spin through the collections until you find something you like.

artCircles is free.

via The Hot Studio Blog

The first speaker in the clip is Dieter Rams, famous for his contributions to industrial design, particularly for the consumer products company Braun. He is then followed by Jonathan Ive, the head of design for Apple.

While the speakers are discussing the design of physical objects, I believe many of the design concepts they discuss apply to all kinds of design.

If you enjoy this clip, I’d recommend you check out the documentary in full. It’s currently available on Netflix Instant.

Those familiar with Slideology will recognize the (somewhat altered) diagram categories: Flow, Network, Stack, Segment, and Join. Many of the diagrams are editable versions of those sketched out for us in chapter three of Nancy’s book.

Most of the diagrams have multiple versions to facilitate different needs. All are just $0.99. And all are intended as starting places that can be manipulated, altered, and resized, etc.

This is a very exciting announcement and a very cool tool that makes it much easier to create diagrams that formerly would have required lots of time and possibly other design tools.

Yesterday Nancy tweeted that you can use the code 3forfree to get three free diagram downloads. But be careful. Once you have the first taste it may be hard to stop. :^)

Information and image via the Duarte Blog

Because your first idea may not be the best.

via 37signals.com

Beautiful new deck by Donny Epp.

via Note & Point

A few months ago my wife discovered that there is a right way and a wrong way to wear bobby pins. One way works well and the bobby pin holds the hair in place. The other way the bobby pin falls out. Turns out she had been using them the wrong way.

Bobby pins have two sides: a flat side and a wavy side. The right way to wear them is with the flat side out, wavy side facing the scalp. This way, the flat side presses the hair into the wavy side and it stays in place.

My wife doesn’t remember ever being taught how to use a bobby pin. She just used what she thought was conventional wisdom and never questioned it. All she had to do was turn the pin over, but instead of trying alternate configurations, she assumed that bobby pins just didn’t work very well and therefore avoided them. Now, knowing the right way she uses them all the time.

How does the “wrong way” of doing something become the prevailing wisdom? Especially when doing things the “right way” isn’t much more difficult than the “wrong way.”

The conventional, prevailing wisdom about how to create presentations is often wrong as well. Full-bleed images and one-idea-per-slide isn’t hard to do, but most people never give these things a try. They just assume that PowerPoint isn’t a good tool. That it doesn’t work well. And it’s to be avoided.

Fortunately, the “right way” of doing things when it comes to presenting is well documented by experts like Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds. All you have to do is wonder if there might be a better way and start looking for it.

(Image credit: Phlora)

Beautiful and inspiring presentation by Maria Giudice of Hot Studio.

Also, get an eyeful of all of Hot Studio’s great presentations here.

I really love the simplicity of these infographics by Yang Liu illustrating the differences between the cultures of China and Germany. They really drive home the point that images can help us instantly see complicated things.

See more over at Brain Pickings

For an good study in designing interesting page (or slide) layouts, look no further than the comics page. The legendary Bill Watterson, the cartoonist behind my favorite comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, was a master of thinking out side the box…er…cell.

You can see lots more in the archives at Comics.com.