Obtendo valor com cursos on-line de design gráfico: guia 2024

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Como em qualquer outra coisa que você faz na vida, mesmo que já seja extraordinariamente rico, você deve buscar valor ao fazer cursos de design gráfico. Quando você gasta dinheiro em algo que é inferior e de valor ruim, você está simplesmente encorajando fornecedores abaixo do padrão a continuar enganando as pessoas, desperdiçando seu dinheiro e, provavelmente, desperdiçando seu tempo também.

Neste artigo, veremos as diferentes opções disponíveis para ajudá-lo a alcançar o resultado desejado no menor tempo e com o menor custo. Esses critérios são importantes, pois a determinação do valor é decidida pela seguinte fórmula:

1. Primeiro, você precisa estabelecer claramente por que você quer fazer o curso de estudo

As pessoas realizam estudos por vários motivos. Ao saber por que você quer fazer este estudo, que vai ocupar parte do seu tempo e pode custar dinheiro (c + t), você pode determinar mais facilmente a conveniência do resultado (do), e todos os três são necessário para calcular o valor (v).

Razões típicas pelas quais as pessoas querem estudar:

  • Para aprender novas habilidades
  • Para ganhar prestígio
  • Para ajudar a ganhar emprego
  • Para melhorar as perspectivas de promoção
  • Para um sentimento de conquista
  • Para eliminar o tédio

Esses motivos podem, na verdade, ser categorizados da seguinte maneira:

You may possibly have other reasons as well, but you should easily be able to work out whether the reasons are for yourself or for others. These categories may seem confusing. You may be thinking that gaining employment is something you do for yourself, as is getting a promotion and earning prestige. That’s true, you do (sometimes) benefit from all those things, but that’s not the point. What we’re actually talking about here is whose expectation is being fulfilled.

To frame it in simple terms, if your desired outcome is to gain employment, then you don’t actually care about the qualification itself, you are simply getting that in order to get what you really want (so it’s secondary to your real objective). You’re getting the qualification because you believe the employer you want to work for expects you to have it. The same goes for prestige. In that case, your primary objective is to impress other people, and the qualification is simply a means to achieve that end.

When the only expectations you’re trying to meet are your own (gaining new skills, achieving something, and eliminating boredom), then the situation is entirely different. In this case, you care more about what you’re studying and learning than the piece of paper you get at the end of it.

Portanto, seja honesto consigo mesmo ao determinar o motivo de sua decisão de estudar, porque isso ajudará no restante do processo.

2. Em seguida, determine o que você pode investir em sua educação

The cost of study can vary enormously from $0 to over $100,000. The primary determinants of cost are how, where, and what you study. Since you’re reading this article, we can already be fairly sure that what you want to study is something related to graphic design, so that just leaves the how and where to be worked out.

With regard to the matter of where, it does make a difference. For example, the National University of Singapore is ranked far above UC San Diego (by a full 15 places), but you can’t expect an employer in Frumpburg, Arizona to actually know such a thing unless you point it out. Ironically the exact same situation may occur to job seekers in Singapore, where the Singaporean employer may incorrectly view the American degree as having a higher value than one earned locally.

This is why determining the reason for studying was so important. If your reason is from the left column, the quality of education you’d receive in Singapore is considered by the experts to be better than what you’d receive in a very large number of American academic institutions. However, if the reason was from the “For others” column, and you live in the United States, you may actually find that studying even in a low ranked American institution provides more value.

Next you’ll come to the challenge that if you decide to study online, while much has improved recently, there is still a stigma associated with it, as illustrated dramatically in Better Call Saul when Charles openly expresses his contempt to Jimmy when it is revealed that he earned his degree from the University of American Samoa (go Land Crabs!), even though Jimmy pointed out that the university was accredited.

The reality is that, assuming this was a real scenario, Jimmy’s entitlement to practice law would not be any less than that of Charles, even though Charles earned a degree from a prestigious American Ivy League university, and Jimmy studied by distance education by night while spending his days working in the mail room. Both universities were accredited and all lawyers in New Mexico take the same bar exam. Pass the bar, you’re a lawyer. It’s supposed to be that easy. And yet, there’s still an obvious stigma about distance education, and not just in TV land.

If your reason for studying was a left column reason, online study should definitely be your number one option. It’s way more convenient and the quality of instruction isn’t any less. It’s also often much more economical, and in some cases it’s even free (more about that later).

If your reason was a right column reason, then it could be a bit more complicated. Generally speaking, your certificate, diploma, or degree isn’t supposed to look any different whether you complete your course by distance education or not, but in practice it sometimes does. Most of the time it doesn’t. The second thing is the name of the provider. Stanford University makes a bit more of an impression than Uncle Roy’s School of Visual Design & Horse Dentistry. In the US, Canada, and Australia, it can also add some value if your education provider includes the name of a state or province in their institutional name. Private schools and colleges, other than Ivy League ones, are the most likely to earn looks of derision.

All that having been said, and prestige aside, no course of education will drain your bank balance faster than attending an on-campus course at an American Ivy League university. Community colleges and small private colleges or training centers are massively more affordable, and as long as they’re accredited, you’ll still get the same string of letters after your name. If you’re a left column person, accreditation may not even be that big of a deal, since your main interest is in what you learn, not what you get.

Alguns provedores de treinamento não certificados ou emissores de certificação são respeitados igualmente e, às vezes, até mais do que uma instituição credenciada equivalente. Felizmente, no design gráfico, seu portfólio geralmente é mais interessante para alguém do que para o local onde você estudou.

3. Determine quanto tempo você pode investir em treinamento

Precisa de um emprego no próximo mês? Starting a four year degree probably won’t help a lot (it may help a bit though). Short term certifications are important if you need quick results to achieve an objective that isn’t directly related to the training.

Outroswise it comes down to how it impacts on your life and work. If you’re already busy, then adding study on top will certainly be difficult, but many people do manage to get by. My own experience suggests that it’s very difficult, but it depends on the courses you take.

Also this has to be said: if you can afford to take more time, do it. The longer you take to finish the training, the less pressure you’ll feel. Stress can really block your creativity, and in a field where more of your assessment is likely to be on what you produce than academic examination, you don’t want to be blocked.

4. Para alunos da coluna da esquerda, cursos gratuitos e tutoriais são geralmente a melhor escolha

Muitos cursos gratuitos são tão bons quanto os pagos e alguns são ainda melhores. Além disso, você pode encontrar cursos baratos em lugares como a Udemy, e estes são, às vezes, muito mais produtivos e menos demorados do que os cursos acadêmicos formais. Se o valor principal é o que você aprende e não o que você ganha, então vá em frente e faça os cursos baratos ou gratuitos, ganhe as habilidades e continue fazendo o que você ama.

5. Converta o que você aprendeu nos cursos gratuitos ou baratos em créditos universitários reais

Se você prestar atenção durante seu treinamento e realmente aprender alguma coisa, poderá converter seus conhecimentos e habilidades em crédito universitário por meio de dois caminhos.

O primeiro, que é menos dispendioso, é obter crédito por exame. Para isso você paga uma pequena taxa e vai fazer um exame. Passe no exame e você recebe os créditos. Algumas universidades até permitem que você ganhe todo o seu grau dessa maneira.

The second way to earn credit is by portfolio assessment, but this is usually very expensive, and unlike if you pass an exam, they’re not obligated to award you any credit if in their opinion your work isn’t worthy of being awarded credit.

6. Para os alunos da coluna da direita, os cursos acadêmicos formais são mais adequados

If you’re into acquiring fancy degrees and transcripts without caring whether you actually learn anything of value, formal courses of education provide what you’re in need of. For you, earning that piece of paper (or at least getting it) is more important than the education itself. Now what you will most likely want to do is get that qualification as quickly as possible.

Let’s start with the situation where the qualification you’re pursuing is an actual college or university level qualification. If you’re still in high school, and you’re smart enough, you can enroll in community college classes and start earning college credits before you graduate from high school. This is an excellent way to fast track, and a path that’s often overlooked, usually because students don’t know it’s possible.

Next up, if you have already graduated from high school, you can earn credits by examination and by portfolio assessment (see point 5, above), you don’t have to do every class in the program.

7. Para trabalhos de design gráfico, um diploma universitário costuma ser suficiente

While in most professions a full Bachelors or Masters degree is desirable, graphic designers won’t normally have trouble getting hired with a lot less, especially if they have a strong portfolio or good samples to show. The diploma is just to satisfy the HR department in a big corporation that they’re hiring an “expert” who is not a total slacker. If you want to be even more lazy, some colleges offer an Associate Diploma, which you can get in just one year. Now imagine if you earned that Assoc. Dip. with most of your credits earned by examination. Quite often it’s all you need to satisfy the the HR admin that you’re a serious applicant, and from that point, your portfolio does the rest of the talking.

8. You don’t necessarily even need any diplomas or certificates

If you know you’re a great designer and you don’t think you need any training to prove it, you can bypass the whole song and dance routine simply by joining a professional association. It’s not guaranteed to work in terms of getting you past HR manager scrutiny, but it often does.

O que isso significa é que você pode listar no seu currículo algo como:

Membro do Instituto Americano de Artes Gráficas

Then it is sometimes simply assumed you did much more to qualify for that status than paying $150 to the AIGA. There are many similar organizations all around the world. It works because HR managers are often members of Management organizations where you normally do actually have to qualify to be a member, so they just assume that anyone who is a member of a professional organization had to work as hard as they did… if you’re lucky!

9. Just because I told you how to take short cuts doesn’t necessarily mean I think you should

Being an artist and being a designer are not exactly the same thing, although many people think that they are. To truly be a designer, you really need to be as much of an engineer as you are an artist. Most people don’t have what it takes to be an engineer without at least a little bit of real education.

Ser um grande designer gráfico significa não apenas saber aplicar uma técnica de ilustração específica, mas também por que e quando aplicá-la. Essas são coisas que você normalmente só aprende com o tempo, estudando bastante teoria, incluindo psicologia, teoria das cores e, às vezes, até física. Além disso, dependendo da sua especialidade, provavelmente você também desejará fazer todos os tipos de aulas de tecnologia e aprender a usar as ferramentas avançadas do comércio. Tomar atalhos significa que você pode perder muito disso e, em última análise, talvez nunca atinja seu pleno potencial como designer.

10. Cursos curtos gratuitos que valem a pena investigar

Lembra no início do artigo quando mostrei essa equação? Você sabe, aquele sobre valor é igual a custo e tempo divided by the desirability of the outcome? Well, if you can make cost equal zero and time be as short as possible, while the desirability of the outcome is still relatively high, then that must equal great value. Here’s a round up of a few free short courses that you could consider:

  • Alison - Visual e Curso de Design Gráfico. É um curso de horas 3 (estudo no seu próprio ritmo) com uma avaliação no final e a chance de obter um certificado não acreditado. O curso abrange uma excelente seleção de habilidades básicas necessárias para a competência em design gráfico. Se você quiser, você pode concluir um curso de diploma inteiro (não credenciado) e comprar um diploma de aparência elegante para pendurar na parede.
  • Udacity - Introdução ao Design de Coisas Cotidianas. This one takes 2 weeks to complete, but it’s an in-depth introductory course taught by design professionals which will equip you with the principles of design.
  • Coursera - Introdução à Tipografia. Taught by Anther Kiley on behalf of the California Institute of the Arts, this 4 week Coursera course will give you a really detailed understanding of fonts and the science of typography. Yep, you’re investing a whole month to just learn about type, but you’ll be amazed at just how much you can actually learn about that topic, and how useful it will be to you as a designer.
  • Coursera - User Research & Design. It would be nice if this course actually taught you how to design a user, but unfortunately the title is just poor semantics. The course has a large number of instructors from the University of Minnesota, and while it’s primarily geared toward web designers and software UI designers, it will give you insight into how audiences respond to designs and how they think about the elements of a design. Like most Coursera courses, this one also requires an investment of 4 weeks, but it’s free.
  • Coursera - Design Gráfico. The no-nonsense title of this course lets you know what you’re getting into right from the start. It’s taught by David Underwood from the University of Colorado Boulder. The course really hits its stride during the 2nd and 3rd weeks, where you’ll learn a lot of important techniques and theories.
  • edX - ilustração da história natural. This one is a little different. The provider is the University of Newcastle (in Australia). While it’s not really aimed at beginners or at all suitable for them, if you can already draw then this course will teach you some of the high level techniques used in sketching the natural world. Although it’s not specifically about graphic design, the skills and knowledge are transferable. Learn to draw and color a butterfly perfectly, and you’ll be able to create all kinds of other things using the same skill set.

Additionally you will find plenty of sites online (such as the one you’re reading now) that offer free tutorials on all things design related. You may have to wade through quite a lot of low quality tutorials before you discover any real gold, but that’s the tradeoff you have to make when you are getting something for free.

Bogdan Rancea

Bogdan é um membro fundador da Inspired Mag, acumulando quase 6 anos de experiência neste período. Em seu tempo livre, ele gosta de estudar música clássica e explorar artes visuais. Ele é muito obcecado com fixies também. Ele é dono do 5 já.

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