The eLearning Center for Gatlin Education Services

Looking to launch your career designing marketing or identity pieces for large companies or small businesses? This nationally recognized Business Marketing Design program imparts the fundamental technical and aesthetic skills required for design in a business environment.

As a student, you'll learn in-demand software programs that a marketing designer needs to know: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Microsoft Powerpoint. You'll prepare digital images, illustrations, and presentations, learning how to address the challenges of color, typography, composition, and visual identity design.

Hands-on projects focus on essential skills and provide experience in business-focused design scenarios. Class assignments include digital imaging and retouching, icons and illustrations, presentation graphics, color, typography, and composition studies, print and display advertising design, and brand identity development.

Course Objectives

Students who complete the program can expect to learn to:

• Prepare bitmap images for print or digital media using basic Photoshop retouching and correction techniques, collage, and compositing.
• Create vector art illustrations using shape drawing and freehand drawing tools, type tools, and transformation and distortion effects.
• Develop Powerpoint presentations using professional, consistent slide design and typography, working from slide and title master pages.
• Gain a basic understanding of creative and career options in the marketing design field (optional elective).
• Develop effective color schemes for different client projects using the principles of color harmony.
• Use typography effectively by following the basic principles of typography design, selection, and layout.
• Develop a logo design through the each stage of a professional logo design process: research, design, and presentation.
• Create two-dimensional layouts that embody the principles of effective composition, such as unity, balance, rhythm, and proportion.
• Develop print advertising campaign for various clients in different media, applying principles for effective ad design.
• Research and design logos for three different companies, exploring differences in concept development.
  

This program consists of nine required courses. An optional introductory theory course is available for beginner students. Course descriptions are as follows:

Photoshop Basics
Acquire a thorough grounding in Adobe Photoshop, the premiere digital imaging program for graphic designers. Hands-on projects show how to select, enhance, distort, color, scale, and manipulate scanned images and artworks—or create them from scratch. Every designer must tame this creative powerhouse of a program.

Illustrator Basics
Build a working knowledge of Adobe Illustrator, the graphic designer's vector program of choice. Course projects explore selection tools, drawing tools, layers, the pen tool, transformations/ distortions, type tools, and modifying paths and shapes. Tapping into the power of vector software allows you to produce detailed and scalable art for almost any application.

PowerPoint Design
Tackle techniques for designing effective PowerPoint presentations: ones that are clean, clear, visually appealing, and engaging in their delivery of content. You’ll learn how professional presentation designers develop custom slideshows with impact and edge, avoiding common design pitfalls.

Color Theory
Focus on developing appropriate color systems for graphic design projects. Projects explore the principles, terminology, and applications of color theory, with an emphasis on manipulating color. A working knowledge of the expression and perception of color, and color interaction, lends credibility and sophistication to a designer's work.

Fundamentals of Typography
Explore the critical role of typography in graphic design. Course projects build an understanding of the anatomy of the letterform, the distinguishing features of different typefaces, and creative applications of type. An assured grasp of typography is essential in any visual communication project.

Fundamentals of Logo Design
Explore the philosophy and process behind designing a logo. Students learn the importance of corporate identity and the different stages in a typical logo design project. The course establishes a solid conceptual and practical grounding for anyone interested in pursuing a career in visual identity, from a design or a marketing perspective.

Design and Composition
Discover the principles of effective composition in print design and advertising. Composition, literally the assembly of elements, is the artful arrangement that guides the eye and unifies a design work. Case studies and hands-on projects address closed/open space, negative space, movement, and more.

Advertising Design
Learn the rules of advertising design from both a creative and a business perspective. Case studies from print, Web, and TV media showcase advertising concepts at work: persuasion, color psychology and composition, copywriting and typography, and brand communication. Course projects include ads for newspapers, magazines, subways, and transit/outdoor applications, and a multi-part ad campaign.

Branding and Identity
Develop essential skills for designing logos, marketing materials, and advertising programs to establish and promote corporate identities. Case studies focus on giant corporations such as CBS, BMW, and Sony, and how they established their corporate images and business strategically. Course projects require designing or redesigning corporate identities for both existing companies and newly established businesses.