Non-designers · 12 months · Flexible pace · Adobe InDesign
Design@Work is a practical online design course from The Graphic Design School, built for non-designers who need to produce professional design work at their job. You learn Adobe InDesign, a set of working design skills, and how to adapt TGDS-supplied templates to your workplace brand. 12 months of access, flexible pace, tutor support the whole way.
Non-designers · 12 months · Flexible pace · Adobe InDesign
Design@Work
Design@Work is a practical online design course from The Graphic Design School, built for non-designers who need to produce professional design work at their job. You learn Adobe InDesign, a set of working design skills, and how to adapt TGDS-supplied templates to your workplace brand. 12 months of access, flexible pace, tutor support the whole way.
Design@Work is the design course for non-designers.
A course focusing on enabling you to accomplish design tasks without years of design training. We supply you with a selection of beautiful work related design templates, teach you a simple set of working design skills and instruct you how to use Adobe InDesign so that you may apply designs to our templates.
Entirely online and self paced you can fit it in at work, around work, when you want.
You will have access to the course for 12 months. You may use the design templates at your leisure or when your work requires that special design job. The course can be completed in a much shorter period, however, if you prefer to go at a leisurely pace, you can dip into the resources and learn what you need, when you want.
Competence, not mastery
Not mastery — competence. You learn the 20% of InDesign that handles 80% of workplace design tasks: flyers, reports, social templates, simple branded documents, presentation decks.
Type, alignment, hierarchy, colour — enough principles to make better choices than "I'll just use the defaults". You won't become a designer. You will stop making designs that look like they were made by a non-designer.
TGDS supplies a library of workplace templates. You customise them to your brand. By the end you have a ready-to-use kit for your organisation.
Useful as evidence of CPD, training undertaken, or a skill added. Not a design qualification — doesn't try to be.
Design@Work is for non-designers. If your goal is a career in graphic design, take the IFC or Cert IV instead.
Microsoft Word and PowerPoint were not made to be design tools. Introducing InDesign. InDesign is what we call a ‘multi page layout program’. This means that you can create a design that has one or more pages. InDesign is great for type and can also accept what we call vector and pixel based graphics. Fancy words for graphics and images.
InDesign is very intuitive and can be used from a beginner to a professional level. Using InDesign on a regular basis will expand your skills and in the future, create your own designs. That’s tons of scope and lot’s of creative possibilities. We like that!
Students in Australia, NZ, Europe and Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) are eligible to receive the student discount for the Adobe Creative Cloud required to complete this course.
We will let you know how to go about this upon enrolment.
Choose from a set of Services or Goods related templates; Business Cards, Flyers, Newsletters, Brochures, Letterheads and even a personal Mood Board for the presentation of your ideas. We regularly add to templates, so let us know if there is something you need.
As you use your templates for work we will also be teaching you lots of other cool design stuff too, so here is the course broken down.
Module 1 - Welcome to Design@Work
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The first module of this course lays the foundations that will be built upon in Module 2. Students will learn to start using Adobe Illustrator™, and as they progress through the module content they will be nurtured through Software Learning Video Tutorials in InDesign™.
The Creative Cloud Suite: Students will learn which programs are good for a variety of uses in desktop publishing and why MS Word is no good for designing.
Adobe InDesign™: InDesign is Adobe’s publishing and typesetting platform, students will be taught an overview of what it can do for their work.
Design Brief: Students will come to understand what it means to create a design brief, and what one entails.
Module 2 - Working with Design@Work Templates
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Building upon the foundations laid in Module 1, in this module students will work with pre-existing design templates, create quick and cool design projects. Additionally students will work with Adobe InDesign to create fully scoped projects for their work.
Design Templates: Students will become familiar with using design templates in order to turn over beautiful designs quickly and cleanly.
Company Logos: Using their company’s logo, students will learn to work with the different ways a logo can be incorporated into a design system.
Although the Design@Work course is intended for those wishing to up-skill, we do have a completely optional choice for students to submit a set of 3 designs, their briefs and a few other pieces of evidence as assessments. Successful completion will achieve a Certificate of Completion accompanied by a Nationally Accredited Statement of Attainment.
Successful completion of the assessments will achieve a Certificate of Completion accompanied by a Nationally Accredited Statement of Attainment.
Units of Competency
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Produce pages using a page layout application
Realise a creative project
Prepare files for print
Write complex documents
Create Visual Design Components
“I came away with a well-rounded understanding of graphic design. The best part of studying here was having access to tutors via the forum, who always gave helpful advice and feedback on my work.”
“The course is engaging, fun, and informative. The level of support from tutors and even other students is amazing. I had zero experience going into this and now I am producing work I’m genuinely proud of.”
“I finished the course with a cheeky three-month break in between so it’s totally doable, even if life gets in the way. The tutors were amazing — always active on the forum, super helpful.”
Some students have no immediate plans to undertake further study, yet think it wise for them to keep their options open. Courses teaching specialisations within the design sector may require a qualification in design as a pre-requisite of entry.
A qualification is required by their employer. As we are Austudy approved, students wishing to obtain Austudy, may only do so if enrolled in the qualification. We are happy to have a chat to you about the differences in the courses in more detail too.
Tutor
Danny has over 15 years’ experience in advertising, visual communication and filmmaking.
“I grade assignments at night, from the same studio I'm running sports media campaigns in by day. If something you're working on wouldn't survive a client meeting, I'll tell you — because that's the conversation you'll be having six months from now.”
Tutor
Lee-Anne worked for top advertising agencies including TBWA before being headhunted by Virgin in London, where she spent 7 years as an in-house designer.
“I still freelance for international clients while tutoring at TGDS. Everything I'm seeing in the market — the shift to design systems, the motion requirements, the AI tools designers now deal with — it feeds back into how I grade and what I tell students to focus on.”
Tutor
Paloma is a Senior Designer and Art Director who started her career in London working with international and European brands.
“Feedback is where the learning actually happens. I'll take the time to tell you what's working and what isn't — properly, not just 'looks good'. It takes longer to write but you leave the module knowing why, not just what.”
Tutor
Toni has three decades of experience in design and communications.
“I've taught at four universities, run my own practice, and worked in healthcare design. What I've learned is that good teaching isn't about being the cleverest person in the room. It's about noticing where a student is stuck and asking the one question that unlocks the next step.”
Weighing this against other design courses? See how TGDS compares on value, outcomes and accreditation.
You can enrol any day of the year. As we are online and training is self paced, there is no pressure. Enrol when you are ready to start, from anywhere in the world.
Click the link below to check out our flexible payment plans!
