In order to prepare for a major in graphic design, develop your basic artistic and computer skills before college. Most graphic designers start with a portfolio demonstrating basic to advanced understanding of composition, color and texture. Typical high school art curricula prepares students to draw, paint and think visually. Basic understanding of working with a computer is necessary because graphic design is now largely digital.
If you attend a private art college, you may have to take a series of foundation classes to ensure you and other students have a common background in various art-making practices. Otherwise, your first-year curriculum likely will be a series of art history and preliminary art courses as well as English and even psychology to serve as a basis for your design work. After the first year, graphic design majors typically take classes that develop typography, collaborative design, design history, printmaking and offset printing, and digital arts.
As you progress through a college's graphic design program, your classes will become more advanced and more specialized. Most programs include at least a basic website design course. You'll probably take a resume and portfolio preparation class to help with a post-graduation job search. Other classes include typesetting, copy writing, game design, hypertext markup language (HTML), cascading style sheets (CSS), magazine and bookmaking, advertising and branding, information design and presentations, photograph editing as well as liberal arts courses that support a design education. The final year usually includes a projects class in which you develop a project or series that best demonstrates your progress through the program.
After completing a college graphic design program, you should be proficient in, and have a portfolio that demonstrates, drawing and painting, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat) use, typography and typesetting, website design, collaborative projects and campaigns, and packaging design.
In addition, many graphic designers are skilled in 3-D design, animation, HTML, CSS, structured query language (SQL), JavaScript, PHP: hypertext preprocessor (PHP), phone application design, writing, blogging, search engine optimization, marketing and sound and video production.