Graphic Design Basics for Illustrators vs UI / UX Design Specialization
Same Bayesian formula, same rubric — so the difference in scores reflects the difference in the courses, not the difference in how we evaluated them.
Domestika · Design
Graphic Design Basics for Illustrators
California Institute of the Arts (Coursera) · Design
UI / UX Design Specialization
Per-criterion
16 lessons in 2h 21m cover briefing, color theory, typography, image synthesis, grid, and format adaptation — a complete mini-campaign workflow for an animal-defence NGO. Capped because the narrow runtime leaves advanced typography and colour-management only lightly treated.
Silvio Díaz Labrador works at Barcelona's Estudio Mariscal — six years alongside Javier Mariscal — bringing real-studio experience to every lesson. Teaches in Spanish; English subtitles are serviceable but occasionally uneven on tool names.
~$10 one-time for 2h 21m of structured studio-level design fundamentals with lifetime access and 17 downloadable resources. The cost-per-insight ratio is exceptionally high for illustrators who need to pitch campaigns to clients but have never studied design formally.
The NGO campaign brief (poster + format adaptations) is a genuine end-to-end brief with real deliverables, clearly stronger than a pure tool-tour. Capped because the fictional client and constrained scope mean a single project rather than a varied portfolio batch.
Color cohesion, grid composition, and format-adaptation workflows map directly to real client campaign work. Reviewers consistently note picking up immediately usable skills. Limited by the course's short runtime — depth on complex briefs requires follow-on study.
Visual-design-first curriculum with strong typography, colour and hierarchy coverage. Reviewers consistently flag it as a beginner survey — light on modern UX research, no front-end code, and several call the visual aesthetic dated.
Michael Worthington and Roman Jaster deliver calm, well-paced art-school lectures praised across our sample. The structural catch is that there is no instructor feedback on your work — every assignment is graded by other beginners.
At ~$49/month with a stated 2-month path (most finish in 3-4), all-in cost lands around $100-200 — one of the cheapest paid UX paths and dramatically below mentored bootcamps like Designlab or CareerFoundry.
Two end-to-end portfolio artefacts (a mobile interface and a responsive web project) are real and shareable. The ceiling is capped by peer-only grading and brief plagiarism complaints — reviewers report projects stolen and graded by people who don't know the field.
Gives you the vocabulary and the visual instincts of an art-school designer. Real-world job translation is the weakest area — a 2019 Hacker News post documents a graduate building a CalArts portfolio for two years and still being rejected as 'too junior'.
Scoring methodology applies identically to every course on the site — see the formula.