Choosing the best part-time graphic design courses requires you to assess several elements of your current situation, including your schedule, how many classes you can take on a part-time basis per academic term, and how much time you can dedicate to study beyond class. Part-time graphic design courses are different from other types of courses that you might take at the college or university level, in that graphic design courses are hands-on, requiring you to learn through experience. This fact can help with allocating the time that you need to take the courses, and your choice of which part-time graphics design courses to take will usually come down to what type of graphic design you wish to do.
The first step to choosing the best part-time graphic design courses is to understand where on your schedule you can fit them in. The number of courses that you need to take to earn a certificate or a degree in graphic design varies, but you will need to take several courses in succession. Generally, part-time graphic design courses cover a particular aspect of graphic design, such as four-color print processes, or how to accomplish intermediate tasks in Adobe® Photoshop®.
If you are not seeking a formal certificate or degree, you need only take the graphic design courses that cover the subjects you want to learn. This will make the part-time education process more simple, and your overall schedule will be less of a concern as well. Taking a subject-by-subject approach to your graphic design education will allow you to skip the subjects that you are not interested in.
The best part-time graphic design courses will offer you instruction in computer-aided design for either print or Web materials. If you want to focus on print, you will need to take courses on various pre-production processing. If you want to focus on Web materials, you will need to take graphic design courses that focus on HTML with an editing program. The industry standard program is Dreamweaver®, and many schools offer several courses that cover this software alone.
Good part-time graphic design courses will also teach you about the fundamentals of design, such as the effective use of color, of typesetting, imagery, and composition. Full-time graphic design programs often require a student to take several art courses to supplement the student's education, but often this is not a requirement for a part-time student. You might, however, want to consider taking an art composition class to supplement your part-time graphic design courses.