The videos were very clear in explaining the lexicon and frameworks we can apply to critique the design. It also helps that numerous examples were used to demonstrate the application and pop quizzes were available throughout to test our immediate understanding of these concepts. Given also this is a qualitative course, the explanation provided by the instructors in the official quizzes were also very helpful and informative. A good first course to take to expose yourself to the terms and a brief introduction to principles of design and how to use them. Users can benefit from the course especially when they apply them immediately to their surroundings i.e. Instragram pictures/advertisements as we are all surrounded by design-related experiences.

This course is easy to follow, very clear, and very elaborated. The teachers are very good and communicates the point clearly and slow enough to understand and digest. Thanks to the nature of the course which is "design", the awesome visual contents showed in the lectures kept me interested all the way and excited to be shown the next art.

This is very recommended for people pf all ages and skills that are interested in design and want to have more vocabulary to communicate to others about a work. I learned so much and hoping to learn more from CalArts.

This is the course I wish I had taken before I pursued a career in design! My education and work has primarily been in designing for (digital / mechanical) functionalities, and I have been wishing to become more articulate in understanding art direction and style. This course taught me how to approach looking at a piece of visual design and how to talk about it. Now that I understand the approaches, I feel more confident moving onto making work that consciously uses specific languages of visual design to convey meaning.

A good course in addition to Graphic Design. There are minor problems with the sound, it is interrupted between phrases and slightly cuts off the beginning of phrases, for a non-native English speaker, this complicates the process of listening.

As a graphic designer working professionally in the field for over 15years I found this course to be very insightful. I genuinely feel that I grew a little bit more into my craft after having taken it. There is no doubt that you'll be working with a wide range of personalities in the world of visual communication. Objective critique is an invaluable skill and this course will set some standards that if you employ and more importantly share in your day to day work, you'll be better for it.

This course was excellent, it was a little hard if you haven't study something about Art it can be really hard but at the end the instructors explain good and you end having the idea of how to do it on your own. I recommend it

The only design course that looks at practical real world design, such a WOW course. All the dash dot comma dash design primers never got me anywhere. Thanks so much for this course!

A deeper lok into graphic design which helps create a language for assessing other peoples work as well as your own. The examples used here show range of interesting works and assessing thier elements was both helpful and inspiring.

Short course that gives a good introduction to analyzing design elements. This will give you the framework and vocabulary to clearly convey points in your analysis,

A beautifully designed course for all those who wish to learn design, graphics, posters, journals etc. The pace of the course was just right. The professors delivered the content in easy understandable language while using a lot of pictures and graphics. I liked the assignments too as they pushed me to think differently and understand the various elements used in graphics designing. I relished every bit of this program. Thanks to the CALArts Team and Coursera!

Best Regards,

Pallavi Chauhan

If you're working in an industry where you have to collaborate or interact with designers, this course is for you. While it was a little hard for me to grasp an understanding of things, I eventually got my grip thanks to both the instructors, especially Randy who began explaining with the most common things possible and then proceeding towards more complex examples which felt like a walk in the park. For anyone who really wants to understand art, this is THE COURSE for you!

This course is a short period of time and it's highly recommended for the Graphic designer. It gives excellent introduction to analyzing design elements. Basically It will helps to understand and how to implement the Critique framework in the real life . it was a little bit hard to understand first time , but if you didn't study something about Art before as liked me however if you focus the instructors explain than you will get the all point clear.

I am a self-learned designer with years of professional experience, but I realized I need more knowledge and practice of articulating various elements of design to be able to work with people better. This course has been of immense help. I think if you are a designer, you will finish it faster but it will take a month of practice with different designs to get fluent with it. Thank you Coursera, Calarts, and professors for making this available.

Whole course is really amazing ! I never had opportunity to learn art on that way and there is not similar course anywhere. It is unique, maybe a little short because it makes us more hungry to learn from mentors. This course is pure gold and I hope that will be more. By the way I will enroll to more CalArts content because CalArts is amazing. Thank you guys. I feel more advanced now as graphic designer.

A wonderful and very approachable course both for beginners and for people who are well versed in the worlds of design and art. I am myself a visual communication graduate, but the course helped me wrap my head around topics I was either to shy to ask or topics I vaguely understood but very much needed to be explained about in a simplistic and well-structured manner.

Thank you, Yasmin and Randy, for your time and expertise in giving us the knowledge for LExicon and how to use the Critique Framework. It has been very knowledgeable and interesting to see how a simple design has secrets hidden. We got the learning of how to use the right framework to understand the image. Thank you once again.

Excellent content. I was challenged more than I expected and felt like the instructors put a lot of thought into the course. My only criticism would be the final assignment being graded by other students in the course was not ideal; still I understand it's usefulness in a course with so many students.

The provided material is really good. The videos are very useful: specific, short and well explained. Many references and examples of pieces of work are given, which makes it much easier to follow the course. The bibliography is diverse and interesting. I have enjoyed it and learn a lot from it.

This course helped me to learn the nitty-gritty of visual communication and graphic design. Every week I have learned something new which would surely help me to improve my work. I would definitely recommend this course to everyone who is interested in learning visual communication in-depth.

I found the course very useful to understand how to read through a piece of graphic design and the basics of language design. Materials and lessons are really valuable content that explains meanings in a strong and clear manner. I'm very happy with the concepts I have learned.

I've learned something new and valuable. This course definitely worth it. It taught me how critique for a work of design is a huge deal and how a person confronted with a design should be aware of what to look at before address the critique. Superb effort! Thank you very much!

This class was great in introducing vocabulary and concepts of visual arts and design that allows for a formal structure of how to make a critique about them. It helps to also identify meaning, function, purpose, composition, and visual language in an efficient way!

I like this course because as a graphic designer, I learned a few important subjects and it's will very use full, well designed and explained by our tutors, I will suggest this other also for learning sole of graphic design,

note: thank you for CALARTS & Coursera

I develop my skills a lot through this course by learning about how to read any poster, a design related article, and a lot about graphic design. so i want to say a huge thanks to both tutor's prof. Yasmin Khan and prof. Randy Nakamura.

As someone who does graphics design as a side job, I really found this course useful. I can better understand and form proper criticism about other works, and explain my own works better to clients with my new jargon.