A lot of designers are self-taught. The benefit of teaching yourself is that you can work at your own learning pace and set your own agenda. However, most new self-taught designers jump straight into designing without any previous knowledge of general design theory. With the explosion of resources about web design already in existence it’s easy to read one or two articles per day….. but you have to find the good ones first. We’ve tracked down 20 free design lessons which will teach you the basic tricks of design.
Basic Theory of Design
- The Principles of Design
- Principles of Good Design: Balance
- 3 Graphic Design Principles for Instructional Design Success
- Ten Graphic Design Paradoxes
- The Complexity of Simplicity
Color Theory
- Color Theory Quick Reference Poster
- Choosing color combinations
- Color Wheel Pro – See Color Theory in Action
- Color Psychology
- Color Theory in Graphic Design
Typography
- A 20 Minute Intro to Typography Basics
- The Principles of Beautiful Typography
- Five simple steps to better typography
- How to create great web typography in 10 minutes
- On Choosing Type
Principle of Layout
- Designing with grid-based Approach
- Grid-based Layout
- Five simple steps to designing grid systems
- Rules of Thirds, Visual Center, Grids
Featured photo credit: Colored pencils via Shutterstock
