Working in the web design industry you are most likely always learning. To improve and excel in your area, you need to proactively continue to expand and learn new skills. If you are just starting out and need a beginners course or training in a particular subject such as Photoshop or Javascript, it will be essential to study these areas proactively. By expanding your expertise, you will prove competence and help advance your career to the next level.
We will take a look at the best places to learn visually on new design and development skills.
01. Tuts+
Tuts+ provides a wealth of knowledge to designers and developers. Their ultimate missions is 'helping people learn and earn online'. Tuts+ offer a wide range of text and video based tutorials. They started out as a blog but expanded into a large network of educational blogs and then finally into an educational learning library.
Besides offering free tutorials, they publish subscription based courses with access to over 550 different types of courses from Wordpress, illustration, motion graphics, HTML, CSS, Photoshop and many more popular web design courses. As part of their subscription they have a large collection of eBooks, from Packt Publishing, Smashing Magazine and many more leading educational publishers.
With such a thriving community of authors, Tuts+ is a one stop library to learn the latest technical and creative skills you need.
02. Treehouse
Treehouse offers affordable education material aimed at beginners and to help people land new careers. Treehouse provides web design, web development and iOS development training courses. Courses on offer include Javascript, Wordpress, SEO, PHP, website design and many more.
What makes Treehouse standout against other training platforms, is they provide interactive quizzes and challenges. Once you complete these or any courses you are awarded badges on your profile. Companies such as LivingSocial and Simple actively recruit new employees on Treehouse based on the number of badges students' attain.
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Treehouse offer affordable subscription plans to get you started learning new skills.
03. Lynda.com
In April 2015 LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com, an educational platform, for a whopping $1.5 billion. Lynda.com is a leading online learning centre established to help any one wanting to learn new technology, creative skills, business studies and more. And it is all taught by industry leaders.
Lynda.com allows you to control the viewing experience of any course, you can watch them on your computer and continue learning on a mobile device, or even switch back and forth. As well as creating your own unique playlists and share them with friends and colleagues.
With over 1000 courses, besides offering just your typical web design courses, Lynda.com also offer courses in business skills, Microsoft products, operating systems, networking and other topics.
04. Udemy
With over 30,000 courses and over 7 million students worldwide, Udemy excels as a leading online learning market place. Courses are available on-demand so you can watch them at your own pace, at any time and on any device.
Udemy are further expanding their library of courses and offer businesses a custom online learning centre for educating employees and large groups.
Udemy offer a large range of courses available in 80 languages, including Javascript, SEO, Photography, HTML5, iOS App development, Java and much more.
Don't know which course to select? Udemy offer transparency providing customer reviews on each course and how many students have been enrolled on each one.
05. Packt Publising
Established in 2004, Pack Publishing's mission is to deliver effective learning for software development. So far they have over 2000 books and videos on offer, specialising in publishing focused books on specific technology and solutions. Packt Publishing have recognised the changing attitude of how people learn online and are now actively producing new educational video courses regularly.
Video training courses ranging from mastering CSS, learning Angular JS, responsive web design and many more. They also offer some of the best web development books on the market including mastering JQuery, Wordpress, mastering JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3 and many more.
For avid readers and would like video courses to company their books, Packt Publishing is an ideal place to study.
06. Level Up Tuts
Born out of frustration, due to the lack of instrumental documentation. The original authors started Level Up Tuts to help provide quality documentation in the form of video tutorials on YouTube to share with the community. Level Up Tuts are continuously producing new videos on a weekly basis. All training courses are all completely free. Tutorials include HTML5, Sass, CSS3, Drupal, Wordpress and many more.
Besides offering free tutorials, Level Up Tuts do offer a premium package. This grants access to live code examples used in the video tutorial, no ads, private forum access, ability to download videos and receive badges on your profile.
Level Up Tuts is a great place for anyone wanting to pick up new skills casually without having to pay.
07. KillerSites
KillerSites has been educating web design students with practical skills for over a decade. They offer video courses aimed towards beginners. These courses range from Complete Adobe Web Training, Complete Wordpress Package, Complete Web Programmer and many more. Each course provides hours of training material and guides students from start to finish to becoming a fully trained professional.
All video tutorials on offer guarantee lifetime access and can be purchased as a digital format or on a USB or even DVD. KillerSites, offer a great introduction to students to get started learning new skills, from start to finish.
Conclusion
There are so many places to start studying and learning new skills. Make sure you check out these learning platforms and see which one attracts you the most and get learning!
Words: Steven Wu
Steven Wu currently runs R & W Media, a Magento agency based in London. He frequently writes for online and print publications.
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