The best class I’ve taken on Skillshare is still Jessica Hische’s Logotype Masterclass (check out my full review of that class if you’re interested). I would recommend it to anyone interested in type or logo design. She’s such a great teacher! Each lesson is thorough and her checklists have become simple practical tools for me. If you like this class you definitely also take her Drop Cap Letterform class.

Aaron Draplin has a cult following and it’s easy to see why. He has a fun personality and a quick and dirty approach to design. Nothing is precious about his process and I really identify with that. A little warning, even if you’re familiar with Illustrator, this class moves quickly — I had to pause and rewind a lot to catch all the shortcuts he uses. The trick he teaches in the bonus class on adding texture and imperfections to your work is something I use all the time and it’s almost worth it just for that. Check out Aaron’s class here.

The two classes above require you to be quite comfortable with Adobe Illustrator, but this one is great for anyone with basic knowledge of Photoshop. It doesn’t require you to know much at all beyond adjusting brightness/contrast levels or moving elements around on different layers. Gemma O’Brien a supremely talented artist and designer known for her hand-drawn type and here she leads a great lesson in efficiently combining digital and analog processes without losing the energy of the initial sketches.

Trashhand is well known on Instagram for his aesthetic — he loves exaggerating perspective using leading lines and playing off architecture to show scale. Naturally he shoots quite wide here, 24mm, and although it’s not necessarily my style, I found it really helpful to see his process all the way through. There are a lot of great insights for planning a shoot, working with a model, and just enough Lightroom workflow to get you started. He makes the entire process feel very do-able and it’s one of the few classes where most of the photos taken during the demo are actually great images. Note: Don’t put yourself or your model in danger, you can practice this stuff without climbing under a bridge. You can check out his class here.

This is the lightest of all the classes I’ve included here. Julia Rothman is a talented illustrator and pattern designer and here she walks you through a simple way to create a repeating pattern. This class is an easy-win and by that I mean it’s something you can sit down and finish without much effort and it’s extremely satisfying. This could actually serve as a simple warm-up-your-brain exercise to do every so often as a way to combat creative blocks. You can check out Julia Rothman’s class here.

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