Design
Courses on visual and interface design: typography, layout, colour, systems and the tools designers work in.
Verified courses first, then the rest of the category
Making a build work across screen sizes, treated as its own course rather than as an afterthought to layout. Free from Webflow University, with an account offered to track progress.
Not independently verified
An hour on producing marketing material in Canva, sitting between design training and product training. From Canva Design School.
Not independently verified
A one-hour tour of the breadth of Canva’s Visual Suite, for people who know the basics and not the range. Product training.
Not independently verified
A sixteen minute course on presentation design drawn from expert contributors, covering how slides are structured and styled to hold an audience rather than how the software works. From Canva Design School.
Not independently verified
Forty-eight minutes on print advertising specifically, an unusual subject for a current design catalog and useful for that reason. From Canva Design School.
Not independently verified
W3Schools’ tutorial on Sass, the CSS preprocessor. Short written lessons with runnable examples, free to read without an account.
Not independently verified
Nearly an hour and a half on running creative campaigns at scale, aimed at teams rather than individuals. From Canva Design School.
Not independently verified
Twenty-three minutes on designing for social media, short and specific rather than a general social strategy course. From Canva Design School.
Not independently verified
An hour of Canva training aimed at teachers, covering the classroom uses the general essentials course does not. Product training for a specific audience.
Not independently verified
UC San Diego on user research and prototyping, the empirical half of design practice. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
Michigan’s web design sequence, taking someone from no code to a responsive site. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
CalArts on taking a web design from wireframe through to prototype. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
The main introduction, twenty lessons across three sections taking a site from the box model and an HTML and CSS primer through building a hero, navigation, cards, a form, responsiveness and interactions, to publishing. Free from Webflow University, with an account offered to track progress.
Not independently verified
A course on the decorative end of front-end work: particle effects, SVG animation, advanced interaction and HTML Canvas, with bonus material on animation design, layout animations in React and a set of open-ended challenges. Delivered as interactive articles with over a hundred short videos, exercises and mini-games. Sold in three packages that differ by how much of the material is included, all with lifetime access, Discord access and an unconditional thirty-day refund.
Not independently verified
A free course on the WordPress block editor, aimed at people producing content rather than at developers building themes. Free from Yoast academy.
Not independently verified
About this subject
Courses on visual design: composition, colour, typography, brand and the software the work is made in. Design teaching divides more sharply than most subjects between principles that hold regardless of medium and tool training that is only about one application. A portfolio needs both, and a course that promises both in four hours is usually delivering the second.
Guidance
Verification tells you that a course delivers the material it advertises. It cannot tell you whether the work it produces is good. These are the things worth checking yourself.
Learning a design application teaches you to execute an idea. Learning composition, hierarchy and typography teaches you which idea to execute. People who learn only the software tend to plateau at competent-looking work that does not communicate, and the fix is usually a course with almost no software in it at all.
Design improves through critique more than through instruction, and most self-paced courses cannot offer it. That is not a flaw so long as you know it: a self-paced course can teach you principles and technique, and you will still need somewhere to have work looked at. Where a course includes review, mentoring or a community, the listing says so.
A course that ends with finished pieces is worth more to a designer than one that ends with a certificate, because hiring in this field runs on portfolios. Where a provider describes projects or briefs, the summary records it. A course with no output at all is an orientation rather than training.
Some design courses run on free or browser-based tools, and some assume a paid subscription that costs more than the course. Where a provider states the requirement we record it. If the course is published by the company that makes the tool, expect the tool to be assumed.
Brand identity, editorial layout, illustration and interface design share vocabulary and very little else in daily practice. Course titles are often looser than the content. Read the syllabus for what is actually produced, and if you want screens rather than print, the product and interface material is filed separately in this directory.
Standards
The published standard applies unchanged. These are the checks that tend to matter most in this subject.
A verification says nothing about the aesthetic quality of the teaching or the work it produces. We do not assess taste, and we publish no ratings.
Questions
For most of this category, no. Typography, layout, colour and brand work are craft skills taught systematically. Illustration courses are the exception and normally say so in their prerequisites.
Only if it sets real briefs and you complete them. Where a provider describes projects the listing records that, but we make no claim about whether the resulting work will meet any particular employer or client standard.
Several courses here are built on free or browser-based tools, and the principles material needs no software at all. Where a paid tool is required and the provider says so, the listing records it.
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