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.

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.

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 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!

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!

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.

Besides trying to find some form and meaning in a design of art, the course also teaches to make meaningful connections when you form and express your own thoughts.

I was able to understand concepts utilized in the designing process of an artwork. It's a great course to learn about the process and analyzation of design.

I loved the continuous engagement with exercises and peer reviews. I think generally it’s the best way to learn.

I really loved this course :)

For an entry level course that welcomes beginning designers and non-designers, I feel the examples shown and pieces for critique were difficult for even experienced designers. While I'm glad I took the course to make sure I didn't miss any valuable design information, I was a little disappointed. It says in the course description how this course will help during the design process, but I honestly don't feel that was covered. Because the one instructor at times seemed to be mumbling, the text sometimes did not make sense and it was difficult to take notes.

I finished all the assignments and every quiz on time but the course says it's still in progress... I've been waiting for two weeks to have my certificate but nothing happened.

Please fix this :)

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

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.

Very well organized lesson. It helps us understand the fundamentals of not only of graphic design, but any kind of visual art, also. It helps us recognize the characteristics of a visual composition and to entone the characteristics of our visual compositions to correspond in a good way to our audience. Well done to the teachers!

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.

Absolutely loved this course. It was a great experience. The speakers were good designers who shared their vision from beginning to end. I do it just for a few weeks, and I am happy to receive my certificate. I will recommend who wants to learn Graphic Designer to once get into this course. Thank you, Calarts!

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.