There’s a lot to learn when it comes to website design. You could learn coding, SEO, WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, and so much more. But, oftentimes, the actual design principles and procedures themselves are skipped over.
I wanted to learn how a website designer went from blank screen to finished, unique, and on-brand website designs. And this course delivers just that.
Design Academy is the definitive course for learning step-by-step everything it takes to make a strong design for your websites. If you want to break out of choosing pre-made templates and go all-in on making handmade builds or you want to be more confident in remixing those templates, then this is the right course for you.
In this review, I will evaluate Design Academy so you can see if it is a good fit for you.
Design Academy Review Summary
Design Academy by Laura Elizabeth is the best course for those wanting to gain confidence in creating good design for the web. From planning out your content, preparing layouts, choosing type and color, curating imagery, and putting them all together in a final website build, you will learn every step of the process necessary for a strong web designer.
Pros of Design Academy
Wishlist
Now, let’s take a deeper look into Design Academy and see what they have to offer and if it is the right solution for you. For your convenience, use the table of contents to navigate to different sections of the review.
What is Design Academy?
Design Academy is the website name for the course created by Laura Elizabeth. The course name itself is called “Design Fundamentals” though it is catered for web design specifically. Laura, besides clearly being a skilled web designer, has launched other notable products, like Project Packs and Client Portal.
Here are the benefits you can expect by taking a Laura’s course:
Modules Offered by Design Academy
The course offers 6 different modules that are all available as soon as you enroll in the course.
- Planning
- Layout
- Typography
- Color
- Imagery
- Polish
Course Content Style
Laura is a strong communicator that does not waste your time. The videos are well-scripted, with no fluff, and highly practical and actionable. A typical video is less than 10 minutes, using a combination of on-screen graphics and screen recordings to make understanding her points very easy.
Design Principles that are actually great
The absolute best thing about this course is the content and how it integrates with how an actual website design process actually goes. It’s clear that Laura herself is a working professional in the space and this course shows that through the strategic implementation of how she designs. For example, even something as simple as her tips and tricks for preparing content for your website design is incredibly useful and something I have implemented in my web design projects that have saved me hours of time (and have helped make my designs better).
And I think that’s the recurring theme for this course for me – highly practical, effective, and no-nonsense ways of making effective design on the web. She absolutely nails it.
Learning the Design before hitting the Page builders
Something worth noting is that this course is essentially the education you need to create the amazing mockups and wireframes that later get turned into websites with page builders like Elementor or Webflow, or even Squarespace. I personally have incorporated it into my Elementor workflow, but it would be just as easy to do it for Webflow or other similar builders.
I did want to comment on the power of building before hitting the page builders. I have found, especially as I’ve worked on a couple projects after taking this course myself, that starting in design software, like Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD, has really helped me unlock creativity and create more consistent designs that look more designed. It’s easy to get into a section-by-section designing mindset when going straight to a page builder and it’s easy to retain a templated design when using a template. This course has been everything I’ve wanted to take a step in becoming a more confident web designer.
Conclusion
For those wanting to learn a powerful workflow to crank out well-designed websites with confidence, there is no better course than this. The practical tips, concise teaching, and in-depth explanations of topics that can be very daunting makes this an easy recommendation from me. On top of that, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee so if you feel like it’s not a good fit after enrolling, simply ask for a refund.
Happy learning and I hope this review was helpful for you!
