Recommended training courses for graphic arts?
My fiance is an artist who was laid off because he worked for a major employer in the entertainment industry that required him to be in contact with people.
So he's been unemployed for a long time now, but he has been trying to find work, but there isn't really anything available that uses his particular skills. So we invested in a digital art workstation (basically just bought a monitor with a digitizer built in to use a pen with) so that he could work on becoming an independant artist. But he's so bad at marketing and he spends so much time worrying about fine details that it takes him over a week to finish a single piece, so he hasn't had any success.
So if you combine this with a broken tooth that he hasn't been able to get taken care of because of a lapse in his dental insurance, he's not been in a good place.
I just bought a Mac and was looking for mac-native graphics programs (I sometimes work on marketing, so I need to do photo editing from time to time. Also I used to do photography as a hobby and want to get back into it), when I came across Serif's Affinity Designer Workbook. And I thought to myself that getting my fiance a training course in graphic design would allow him to shift gears into a segment where there is more work. It'll also give him a bit of a kick in the pants to get him moving and feeling better about himself.
I'm sure everyone knows there are millions of online training courses available right now, so I'm hoping someone might have any recommendations. I have some money saved up, so I don't mind paying a little bit extra if it'll result in better results. I'd prefer if it were a class that didn't rely on Adobe Illustrator if possible, but I know that it's the 'standard' and he'll probably have better luck if he has experience in it.
I am also interested in seeing some recommendations, because my girlfriend wants to learn graphic design. I've generally had good experiences with courses on Udemy for other topics. They are very to-the-point.
So I checked the Affinity subreddit to see if anyone had asked about training and the majority opinion seemed to be to simply look at Serif’s official videos on the program. People say the book is a great way to force yourself to do the actual work so you can master it, but they didn’t seem to think that it was a necessity.
The problem with that approach, though, is that it teaches the how but not the why. While my fiancé did get formal art training, he lacks the knowledge specific to what makes one a “graphic” artist. Though from the workbook preview it looks like it does at least brush through what an actual graphic artist goes through.
This whole thing is kind of moot though; I told my fiancé about my intentions and he said he wasn’t interested. And to be fair, there is a slight chance he may be offered his job back before his unemployment runs out.
I’ll probably still be pushing the issue, but in the meanwhile I have bought a copy of Affinity Designer for my account and have been playing with it. It’s on sale right now. While I am not an artist by any means, I have been having fun playing around it. It has some pretty advanced features that help speed up the design process.
Well I'm glad to hear he might get his job back. If you're using it yourself I found some more tutorials that might be helpful. They aren't free but I like having all the material in one place.