Knowledge is the most valuable currency you can own in today’s world. It has the power to open doors that money and influence can’t and give you a head start in life.
But it has another benefit the other two don’t possess. Unlike financial assets and social authority, knowledge is more accessible.
The internet is a virtual field of opportunities, allowing everyone to learn from experts and explore courses from top universities. Various educational institutions and businesses share their programs for free, enabling people to learn new skills, expand expertise, or even start a career.
But you can also find tutorials and manuals that drive self-improvement and help you study trending topics and acquire abilities in numerous fields. That’s a stellar opportunity to learn the fundamentals of web design, a career with one of the brightest outlooks.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, the employment of web designers and developers will increase up to 13 percent by 2030. It should be no surprise that people are increasingly interested in taking this career path.
If you’re curious about becoming a web designer, it’s good to know you don’t need to have a university degree in this field. Many web designers are self-taught or use internet resources, such as courses, tutorials, and guides to complement their official education.
However, most don’t provide a certificate. That usually requires a fee.
Top 10 Free Web Design Online Courses & Tutorials
Acquiring web design skills online might have a steep learning curve, but creativity, eagerness to learn, and commitment make it more than possible. Thus, you will likely enjoy the challenge and thrive at overcoming it.
Avoid letting the fear or doubts stop you because many qualified web designers started the same way. Before sharing the best virtual courses and tutorials, here are the key skills you should adopt to be successful in this field:
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- Bootstrap
- Content Management Systems
- Web Server Management
- Responsive Design
- User Experience Design (UX)
- User Interface Design (UI)
- Color Theory
- Photoshop, Illustrator, GIMP, or Sketch
- InVision Studio or Adobe XD
The following are the best free options for learning web design online:
Ultimate Web Design Course by Webflow University
This web design course includes over 100 videos with easy-to-follow instructions and starts with the basics of using Webflow. However, it also touches on more advanced topics, such as CMS.
As a beginner-friendly course, it will teach you HTML basics, the way CSS classes and subclasses work, page design construction, and flexbox and grids. Besides that, Workflow will help build the elementary knowledge of 3D styles, effects, responsive design, and SEO.
You can complete the course at your pace and give every lesson as much time and attention as needed. Although it depends on your learning pace and how long it will take you to watch every video, the course length is five hours.
If you seek a course to learn web design principles in one hour, this is the best choice. The creator is Jonas Schmedtmann, one of Udemy’s top instructors whose premium courses earned bestselling status thanks to student satisfaction and outstanding performance.
This course will show you how to design professional texts, correctly use the power of colors, create a layout using white space and hierarchy, and increase website visitor conversion. But it also provides helpful web design resources to kickstart your first project.
Thus, this source is ideal for beginners and UX designers aiming to enhance their projects visually.
With this comprehensive course, you will learn how web development works and start building your first HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills. It follows a step-by-step approach and lasts roughly seven hours, depending on your learning pace.
The lessons focus on web development, but you will also learn web design, including file structure, structure diagram planning, navigation planning, and process tools. The course also encourages you to use the knowledge you acquired throughout the 82 lectures by creating a website.
FreeCodeCamp strives to enable free access to coding and programing fundamental principles to everyone hoping to become a web developer, designer, or software developer. Because of that, they released a four-hour course and tutorials about responsive web design.
If you choose freeCodeCamp, you will learn the basics of mobile-first design, CSS units, em vs. px vs. rems, flexbox, CSS styles, and responsive containers. Thus, the course will teach you to make a three-page responsive website.
It takes around seven hours for tutorials and videos, but avoid rushing progress because the lessons are self-paced.
Beginner Web Design using HTML5, CSS3 & Visual Studio Code by Bring Your Own Laptop
Thanks to this experienced web designer who shares easy-to-understand tutorials on YouTube, you can learn the basic principles of HTML, CSS, CSS classes, HTML tags, web structure, dive nesting, external CSS, and much more. The length is four hours and teaches you to create different websites with varying difficulty levels.
Build Your First Web Pages With HTML and CSS by Open Classrooms
The Open Classrooms course gives you a fundamental understanding of CSS3, HTML5, HTML structure, CSS styling, and SEO. Moreover, you can learn how various codes work in practice, enjoy interactive quizzes, and find many engaging video lessons.
Although the course lasts roughly ten hours, it might give you a limited knowledge of web design only and leave you needing more.
HTML5 and CSS Fundamentals by edX
This course is part of W3C’s Front-End Web Developer Professional Certificate, and it will take you around six weeks to complete. However, lessons are self-paced and require no more than six hours per week.
You will learn the elementary principles of HTML5 and CSS, how to write a web page, the concepts of a markup language, web design, style, page layout, and flexbox. However, this course only gives free access to all the materials to students who enroll until May 27.
Free Web Design Course by Educba
Thanks to this comprehensive four-hour video course, you can learn responsive web design and how to create dynamic web pages using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and Bootstrap. It gives you lifetime access and a certificate of completion.
However, you should have elementary knowledge of web development.
Have you ever thought about making your social media platform? Although this course might not make you the next Mike Krieger, it will help you learn the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Meteor.js, and MongoDB framework.
As a seven-hour project-based course, it provides a step-by-step guide on creating a social media network and user registration webpage needed for login or signup. The opportunity is ideal for beginners but not advanced programmers who aim to expand their knowledge.
Udemy web designer and creator Brad Hussey will introduce you to the new Bootstrap 4 features, understand how it differs from Bootstrap 3, build three separate responsive websites, and set an efficient workflow for your projects. However, the course is not beginner-friendly and requires HTML and CSS skills and an elementary understanding of Bootstrap 3.
Although it would be challenging to start with this if new to web design, you can enroll after choosing one of the other tutorials and acquiring the necessary abilities.
To Sum Up
Knowledge has never been more accessible thanks to the internet and educational institutions and experienced professionals sharing their skills online. If you strive to become a web designer or hope to reinforce your expertise and keep up with trends without pursuing a degree, you can explore free courses and tutorials.
You can learn the skills necessary for a compelling website, such as HTML, CSS, and SEO, and land your first clients or add new abilities to your portfolio. All you need is determination, curiosity, and the willingness to start learning.
