Arek Dvornechcuck
Branding Expert
It seems like everyone today has or wants a website.
That makes knowing how to create beautiful, intuitive, and effective websites a valuable skill.
What are the best courses for web design?
Whether you’re a student, freelancer, or working professional, it’s always goo to know how to make great websites.
Web design is an evolving field where new technologies and tools are always popping up, so it's important to stay on top of that to remain relevant in the industry.
Great web design doesn’t only involve creating something beautiful, but also understanding key principles behind marketing, usability, and branding.
Because of how hot the industry is right now, there are thousands of web design courses and tutorials available online.
To help you find the best course for you, I’ve put together this list of best web design courses online.
Some of them are free others are paid, but most are very affordable.
For a few bucks you can get expert tips and save yourself a lot of time trying to figure out things on your own (which can take years).
People always ask me how my website was made or where did I learn web design.
I'm a brand designer at core, but I started my career as a web designer back in early 2000's.
Back then, there wasn't many tools to build websites like nowadays—you had to actually know coding (HTML & CSS and sometimes PHP) to create a website from scratch.
Nowadays, thanks to tools like Webflow or WordPress—you're NOT required to know how to code in order to build a great website.
Today, with plenty courses available online, you can just master UI/UX design and other necessary skills to become a great web designer.
Web design is a multi-faceted discipline that involves a range of hard and soft skills.
Choosing the best web design course for you depends on what you need to learn.
For example, you might be completely new to web design—In this case, a course covering some basic web design principles and practices will be a helpful start.
On the other hand, you might have some experience with WordPress or other website builders, but want to level up so that you can tackle more complex projects.
Different courses can also teach you different ways of designing a website:
As a designer, you have many option as to how you can create your website, so choosing the one that resonate with you the most it's very important.
Are you ready to take your web design to the next level? —Let's dive into my list of the top online web design courses for 2021.
Webflow is a platform that allows users to build, launch, and host a website.
It has been around since 2013 and is currently considered one of the most polished and user-friendly website builders around.
Learn to design, build, and host a website with zero code.
This free course from Webflow’s official university will give you an overview of everything you need to know to get started in around 2 hours.
The 10-part series covers a range of topics, such as:
If you want to learn to build websites visually, then this course is the perfect introduction.
Once you complete it, you can effortlessly segway into any of their other courses to learn about specific Webflow capabilities.
Vako Shvili is an experienced freelance web designer and Best-Selling Instructor.
After fully replacing his 9-to-5 job with a full-time career as a web designer, he is now teaching others those same skills.
A complete web design course from inception to implementation.
For this course, you’ll learn to use Figma - an interface design tool - and Web Flow - a hosted website builder and CMS - for web design.
As a self-proclaimed “life-hacker,” Vako emphasizes that you don’t have to take the complicated route to be a good web designer.
That’s why this course teaches tools like Figma instead of Photoshop and Web Flow instead of HTML and CSS.
The course is divided in six parts that cover everything from design practices to putting together a website to surviving as a freelancer.
With 19+ hours of content spread over 181 lessons, it’s an in-depth exploration of all things web design.
There are several assignments as well as 2 complete web design projects to test your progress.
Vako also runs a Discord channel alongside the course where students can share ideas, content, and help each other out.
Want to create attractive and functional websites from scratch, but you’re intimidated by learning to code?
Then, this is the right course to help get over your fear.
A practical guide to building real-world-ready websites with HTML and CSS.
This beginner’s course is taught by Brad Schiff from LearnWebCode who has even provided web design training to Fortune 100 companies.
This best-selling course has helped nearly 60,000 students learn to develop websites using HTML and CSS.
The course consists of 71 individual lectures that make up a total of 11 hours of on-demand video.
Brad has also helpfully included a ton of downloadable resources and project files that help accelerate the learning process.
You even get an introduction into concepts like responsive design and Sass that will help you create websites that work on all devices - a good deal for around $124.95.
In his own words, Brad wants you to be able to think, code, create, and speak just like your favorite web designers.
In Web Design Essentials, designer Dennis Field from inVision shares how to refine your creative process and use best practices to design a marketing site.
Learn to design effective website landing pages that sell.
In his course, Dennis tries to teach his students to not just design for “pretty” but to design for “conversions” as well.
As such, he’ll show you the step-by-step process of creating a marketable landing page.
Dennis’s design tool of choice is inVision, one of the leading digital design products used at the highest levels of UI/UX design today.
Because the course focuses on the design process, you’ll be learning about prototyping, commenting, asset management, and other essential steps.
Aside from simply designing a website, you’ll also learn how to better incorporate client feedback.
While this course is great for beginners, even more experienced designers use this course as a refresher to improve in specific areas.
This course covers everything you need to know to become a full-stack web designer, from web design fundamentals to front-end web development.
A comprehensive practical introduction to web design and development.
Your teacher will be Brad Hussey, a long-time freelance web designer and the creator of CodeCollege.
The course costs only $18.95, but consists of over 32 hours of on-demand video, 40 downloadable resources, and a certificate of completion
It will also ensure your skills are real-world ready with a strong practical component that involves completing more 23+ web design projects.
You’ll learn nearly every skill a modern web designer needs, from UI/UX design to building a site with WordPress to hand-coding a site from scratch.
Brad also regularly updates the course to keep the skills and technologies he teaches relevant.
In this world of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, being able to design responsive web pages that look great on all devices is a must.
A comprehensive guide to design, code, and launch modern, responsive websites.
That’s exactly what you’ll learn in this course by Adobe Certified Trainer Daniel Scott using HTML5 and CSS bootstrap.
You’ll be using Visual Studio Code as a code editor for learning to build and style websites in HTML and CSS.
While the course emphasizes building responsive websites, you’ll learn so much more.
With over 16 hours of content, you’ll even get to know more about prototyping using cards, design practices, and basic JavaScript and JQuery scripting.
This course has a very strong practical component and Daniel will take you through designing four entire websites.
What makes this different than the previous course is that it focuses exclusively on using Elementor and WordPress - two of the most popular website design tools today.
Learn how to create WordPress websites for free using Elementor.
The course is put together by Ferdy Kopershoek who is a long-time WordPress and Elementor content creator and web designer.
To keep things free, you’ll be learning to install WordPress locally.
This way, you’ll be able to avoid paying for hosting until you’ve mastered web design in WordPress.
There is no coding involved and Ferdy only explores the free versions of all tools involved.
The course costs only $79.99 and will take roughly 8 hours to complete - a relatively small investment to learn to design websites at no cost.
Aside from actually designing attractive and functional websites, many designers face challenges when it comes to directing their projects and working with clients.
A practical guide to direct web design projects, collaborate, and interact with clients.
Teacher Muhammad Ahsan learned these lessons the hard way as he worked his way from a freelancer to working for FORTUNE 500 companies like INTEL, PANASONIC and Coca-Cola.
This course focuses on key issues many web designers face during their career:
In just under 2 hours, you’ll learn about a range of topics from how to interpret a client brief to setting up a design direction for your project.
These are crucial skills that many new designers overlook and that aren’t usually covered in conventional training for web design.
This course is for those who want to understand responsive web design and how it affects different aspects of the web design process.
Learn how to create responsive designs that look great on all devices.
Who better to learn the man who invented responsive design, Ethan Marcotte himself?
This course is aimed at those looking to master this very specific, but crucial, skill.
This quick-fire course only runs for 1 hour and 11 minutes but will cover everything you need to know about responsive web design, including:
You’ll also learn how to incorporate responsive design into your existing design workflow for a more streamlined process.
As its creator, Ethan is a master of responsive design and the resources that accompany this bite-size course are invaluable tools for mastering it yourself.
In this course, interactive designer Andy Pratt and web developer Jesse Arnold will teach you how to make it in the competitive, but rewarding, website design field.
A comprehensive guide to designing websites and thriving in the modern web design industry
This lengthy course is filled with a variety of lessons that not only teach hard web design and development skills, but also soft skills you need to function effectively solo or in a team.
Andy and Jesse’s course comes with a lot of resources to help you take in all of this information. These bonus materials include:
This is one of the top web design courses on this list that give you true insider access to the highest levels the industry.
As you can see, web design courses teach different types of skills, technologies, and methods.
They are NOT just for beginners, but can be used by experts to improve or pick up on new skills.
My list features a collection of the best online web design courses—whether you consider yourself a beginner, or already have some experience with designing websites, you will find something for yourself.
That’s why I’ve compiled a list with a variety of courses to help new and existing web designers regardless of where they are on their journey.
Ultimately, you’ll need to choose the best course for you depending on your goals or where you think you need improvement.
Regardless, investing in yourself is never a bad thing and is part of growing as a person and professional.
Being a great web designer is one thing, but being a successful one is another—that's why learning from experts can take you to new hights.
Did I miss any of your favorite web design course?—Leave a comment below.
Need help with building your website?—Just shoot me an email
