Video Course & Resource LibraryThe Complete Online Video Course & Resource Library
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Level up your visual design skills
Create a portfolio & get hired
Make your startup or side project look professional
Comprehensive, practical curriculum
Over 36 hours of video lessons
Figma resource library
Community with mentor feedback
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Confidently design beautiful user interfaces for any app or
site.
I've been watching Erik Kennedy's Learn UI Design course to bone up a bit... If you're serious about wanting to get better at design, this is the course for you.”
Learn UI Design has made my work here at Google so much better. I even had a coworker ask how I got so much better at design – and now he's enrolled too!”
Learn UI Design is the best money I've ever spent in my (short) career – and I'm not even done with it yet!”
Shortly after completing Learn UI Design, I landed my first job as a UX/UI designer. Listening to Erik’s design rationale helped me develop a healthy thought process and explain all of my design decisions with confidence. One of the best investments I’ve ever made!”
Let me save you some time. Honestly, there's only one reason to read anything on this
page, and it's this: you want to learn how to create great-looking user interfaces.
If that’s not you, you can bounce along now. No hard feelings 🙂
If you’re anything like I was, you find UI design to be confusing and open-ended. The advice out there seems
vague, contradictory, and theoretical (rather than practical).
When you look at design topics like typography or color, you're overwhelmed.
And when you see beautiful designs, they seem to be some mix of:
Subjective
Arbitrary
Easy to recognize, but difficult to create
These feelings are all too familiar to me.
When I was a developer and PM, I felt this way constantly. I saw tons of great designs. I could even
tell you which I liked best. But when it came to recreating something similar for myself, I was
hopeless.
I saw UI designers as magical creatures who sprinkle 🌈 mysterious design dust 🦄 over any
wireframe and make it shine. It seemed like some art school voodoo that was completely inaccessible to
others – myself included.
The Hard Way
When I learned UI design, I had to do it the hard way. Largely self-taught, making progress an inch at a time. In
the end, I learned the aesthetics of apps the same way I’ve learned any creative endeavor: cold, hard
analysis. And shameless copying of what works. I’ve worked 10 hours on a UI project and billed for
1. The other 9 were the wild flailing of learning.
During that time, I came to have a disdain for the theory-heavy tripe that plagues so much design writing. You
know what I’m talking about? Stuff like:
Color theory (in reality, no designers really use it)
The golden ratio (seems insightful, doesn’t help)
Grids (less practical than you’d expect, given the airtime they get)
This stuff seems useful, but it failed the only metric that mattered to me: does it help me
make a bad design look good?
Let’s fast-forward a few years. Now, I’ve designed interfaces for clients like Amazon, Soylent, Roam
Research, and more, and made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it. I’ve circled the
globe freelancing from a dozen countries. From enterprise systems to personal side-projects, I’m
confident in my ability to design whatever I need to – and have it look awesome.
“But I don’t know Arial from Helvetica” you cry. How will you ever become confident in design?
I thought you’d never ask.
I’ve been a professional Visual Designer for 5 years and the course still showed me new stuff – both in the basics and advanced stuff. Just get Learn UI Design. It's a no-brainer.”
Learn UI Design's straightforward approach, illustrated with real-life examples and tutorials, was extremely helpful and eye-opening. I would highly recommend this course for UX designers wanting to add UI design to their toolkit.”
This hands-on course is easily the most effective way I've found to learn UI design”
Introducing
The Complete Online Video Course
54 Video-Based Lessons
Over 36 hours of video lessons, filled with strategies and live examples covering
all major areas of UI design. Watch me, Erik, as I actually design dozens of examples right in
front of you.
Watch from any device
Learn UI Design works on phones and tablets too, so you can watch from your desk or on the go.
Skill-Based exercises
Dozens of assignments tailored to efficiently hone your UI design skills.
Take a shot at them – then post in the student community for feedback from the student
mentors.
Cheatsheets & Checklists
Old-school? No doubt. But it works.
Get over a dozen printable PDF cheatsheets and checklists with key design reminders and frameworks.
I keep these on my office wall. You’ll want to too.
Feedback & Community
Come for the practical design feedback, stay for the welcoming community. Learn alongside other aspiring
designers.
(There’s plenty of elitist, overly-competitive design communities out there — but we’re NOT one
of them 🙂)
Watch Over a Pro's Shoulder
3.5 Fixing Clashing Colors
4.9 Styling Text III
5.4 Icon Design
Learn UI Design is packed full of live video demos. Follow along as I create dozens of
layouts, color schemes, elements, and more. From blank canvas to finished design, you'll see how
the process looks at every step of the way.
Articles can be helpful, slide decks can be illustrative — but live videos combine the best of both worlds. I’ve
designed these videos to be like watching over my shoulder as I share the frameworks, tips, and
tricks that have helped me design UI for companies of every size.
In total, we’ll cover every major area of interface design.
The color videos BLEW MY MIND! This is EXACTLY what I’ve needed to learn for years. I could never name it, but you just showed me. I’ve been paying attention to color for decades, and have NEVER seen this ANYWHERE. Thank you, Erik!”
Fonts have always been a complete mystery to me. But just from watching just the first two typography videos, I am actually capable of pairing fonts – with exquisite results! Learn UI Design's pragmatic approach to design has taught me infinitely more than what reading any design books ever did!”
I’m partially red-green colorblind, and I never thought I could ‘get' color. I just watched [the color palette] lesson and had a bunch of ‘aha’ moments. These last two videos hit a serious home run, and lifted the veil. I never realized how easy colors actually were. THANK YOU!”
There is no other course that covers so extensively the skills you need to design beautiful UI, as well as
the skills you need to be a good designer (and it’s more than just pretty pictures– see unit VII).
Let’s take a closer look at each of the 3 parts.
IUI design in 54 lessons:
The Video Series
Work through it lesson by lesson, or skip around to what you’re most curious about at the moment. I get it
— 36+ hours of video is a lot, even watching at 2x speed. But every minute is something I wish I had
known when I started designing UI.
The most important things you can do for a developer when handing off a file
How a developer looks at your design file
A checklist of things to cover with your developer
IIThe Community:
Feedback & Mentorship
Learning design is a tough thing to do alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had someone to ask questions, get
feedback, and bounce ideas off of?
With Learn UI Design, you’ll get full access to a special community forum where you can do all of that:
Submit (and receive feedback) on every single homework
Get design reviews on your own personal projects
Ask questions from the community mentors
Talk shop with other designers and folks in tech
The community mentors
Erik Kennedy
Founder, Learn UI Design
Humble brag, but relevant: I’ve probably seen more beginner UI designs than
anyone on earth 🙈. 10,000+ submissions later, I’m still in the student community, answering
questions, giving feedback, and working to improve the course.
Leah Huyghe
Lead Product Designer, Meta
Leah took Learn UI Design in late 2018 and was hired by Meta a few
months later. Now she’s back, this time as a Community Mentor, doling out wisdom on UI, UX,
process, and career.
Shane Doyle
Lead Designer, Threefold Systems
Coming in hot from County Wexford, Ireland, Shane took Learn UI Design in
2017, and used the lessons from it to get hired as a designer – and promoted to lead – within
one year. Look out for Shane’s hard-hitting feedback – delivered in a pleasant Irish lilt.
Jenny Yakovenko
Senior Designer, Ob’vious
As a self-taught designer (coming from the world of cartography 🗺), Jenny
quickly realized there’s a large gap between useless theory and practical design advice. Learn
UI Design resonated with her when she took it in 2019, and after getting promoted shortly
thereafter, she now returns as a student mentor.
Julia Scheffer
UX/UI Designer, Bleech
Coming from a product management background, Julia blazed through Learn UI
Design and Learn UX Design in a few months early in 2022. She got hired shortly thereafter, and
now returns to give feedback on UX, portfolios, career, and more.
IIIThe Bonus:
Live Redesign Vault
Completely separate from the main lessons of the course, the Live Redesign Vault is 41+ hours of video
recordings of me, Erik, redesigning student submissions.
The events are live – and all students are invited. But the vault is where they’re cataloged and tagged by
color, fonts, overall brand, and platform – so you can reference them for inspiration and best practices.
As with the video lessons, no rush. You have lifetime access.
Choose from 38+ redesigns
Cataloged by colors, fonts, and brand used
Fully-narrated rationale for design decisions
Easily see the before/after and more
When it comes to learning how to create beautiful designs, this is the most comprehensive course on earth:
Lifetime access to 54 video lessons, complete with cheatsheets, skill-building homework
assignments
A supportive community of beginning designers, mentored by top alum
A vault containing dozens of past redesigns of student submission.
I’ll be the first to admit this course is not for everyone. And while there is a 30-day 100% money-back
guarantee, I want to save you the hassle of signing up, unless you’re in a very specific demographic:
Learn UI Design is not right for you if...
You just want to finish a single design – not learn skills to serve you for years
You believe you can become a better designer by passively watching videos (newsflash: you will have to
do the homework assignments if you want to improve)
You’re not a self-motivated learner (this is an online course, after all. I'm not handing out
grades)
Learn UI Design is right for you if...
You’re eager to learn and practice UI design
You've tried designing something before – and it didn't come out so great
You know learning UI design will add value to your career (thousands of dollars or
more)
You’re self-motivated when it comes to learning – after all, no one’s standing over
your shoulder telling you to do your homework
You’ve got some interest in tech (the more you enjoy geeking out about software, the
quicker you'll learn)
Frequently Asked Questions
Question:
Is this just UI, or does it cover UX as well?”
Answer:
Short: it’s focused on visual design (UI), but often covers UX-related concepts
incidentally.
Long: UX (“how it works”) and UI (“how it looks”) are sister disciplines. It’s impossible to
do one well without the other.
Therefore, I reference UX ideas/topics constantly in Learn UI Design, but it’s not
about them per se. If you’re more interested in UX (that is: interaction design, usability,
user research, etc.), check out Learn UX Design 👍
Learn UI Design is not a different type of design advice than what I put out there for free
— it’s simply much more organized and much more thorough.
So if you find my free content useful, you’ll likewise love the course.
Question:
Am I too much of a beginner for this course?”
Answer:
No.
Learn UI Design is created to guide you from zero experience to a professional level of UI
design skills. Although many students have entered with formal training in visual design, the
majority have none.
Question:
Am I too advanced for this course?”
Answer:
Likely not.
I always tell more advanced prospective students to email me their portfolio, and I’ll let them know
if I thought they were too advanced for Learn UI Design.
However, even among students I’ve told not to join who did anyways, they only report loving the
course and getting a ton out of it.
Why? I suspect it’s because the curriculum is entirely original. I went to engineering
school, not art school — and my take on design shows it. Read my color framework or my step-by-step algorithm for pairing fonts. If this is
useful stuff you have not encountered in your own years of experience, you’ll feel
similarly about the rest of the course.
Oh — and if you don’t, there’s always a refund policy (see next question).
Question:
Is there a money-back guarantee?”
Answer:
Yes – there's a 30-day 100% money-back guarantee.
Try Learn UI Design for 30 days. If you like it, great – you've got lifetime access
to the 54 lessons, homework assignments, and resources (including future updates/additions). And if
you don't like it? Just email and ask for a refund within 30 days – no conditions, no questions
asked.
However, you can use any design app you'd like. Sketch is the next most popular. However, since they all have such similar interfaces, functionality, and even shortcut keys, it matters less which one you pick and more that you simply have a good reason for picking one. Students have successfully completed the course in these 3 apps and others.
Please note: Learn UI Design is not a course about Figma. It’s a course on the underlying, unchanging principles of visual design.
While I happen to cover Figma functionality — from the basics, all the way through prototyping, animations, interactive variants, and more — that is only incidental to teaching you how to do great design work.
Question:
How can I get my work to pay for Learn UI Design?”
Answer:
First of all, smart thinking!
Here's a guide for your employer that goes over
common questions for businesses enrolling their employees in Learn UI Design, including:
Benefits to the employee
Group discounts (they're surprisingly large)
Invoices, certificates, and more
Question:
Are there enterprise discounts?”
Answer:
Yes.
Groups of 5+ seats get a 30% discount. Groups of 10+ seats get a 40% discount. Groups of 20+ seats
get a 50% discount. If you are enrolling 5+ people, please contact me
today (even if enrollment is not officially open).
Question:
Do I get immediate access to all videos?”
Answer:
Yes.
As soon as you sign up, you will get immediate access to the entire video series (including
resources, homework assignments, and cheatsheets), as well as an automated invitation to the student
community.
Question:
Do I have lifetime access to the course?”
Answer:
Yes, all students have lifetime access to the course. This includes all future updates and additions.
As long as this course exists, you will be able to watch any video, complete any homework assignment,
and see any resource. You can start the course the minute you buy it, or a year later – it's up to
you.
Question:
Will Learn UI Design help me get a job?”
Answer:
Yes.
Not only is it everything I wish I had known when I first started designing, it’s also packed with
specific advice taking you from zero to hired:
How to create a design portfolio (even when you don’t have any projects yet)
How to find clients
How to ace a design interview
If you’re self-motivated enough to watch the videos, build your skills, and create a portfolio,
there’s no better way to find a design job.
Question:
How long does the course take?”
Answer:
In its entirety, the course can be completed in 2–6 months.
Learn UI Design is 54 lessons totalling 36 hours of video (average lesson length: 40 minutes). Most
lessons also have a homework assignment and other reference material.
This puts Learn UI Design on par with a typical semester-long college course. If you complete 3
lessons per week, it will take 4 months to go through.
Note: Learn UI Design is a lifetime resource, and designed as much for tactical skipping around and
re-watching as it is for linear viewing.
Wait, wait – who are you?
Hey, my name is Erik Kennedy. I’m the creator of Learn UI Design and Learn UX Design.
I’m also a freelance UX/UI designer based in 🌧️ Seattle, WA.
My clients have ranged from Y-Combinator startups to Fortune 100, including folks like the below:
I’ve also spoken in the US and abroad at businesses, meetups, and universities (like UC Berkeley, Yale, and UW).
And my design writing has been read by over a million people.
So my design career has been an amazing ride.
But before all that, I was on a different path: engineering school. That’s right… a developer
🤓. When I first tried my hand at design, I felt doomed.
It looked awful.
Of course, I had my excuses. I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t know crap about aesthetics.
I majored in engineering – it’s almost a badge of pride to build something that looks awful.
But the passion for design stuck. And I ended up teaching myself UI design the same way I’ve learned anything:
cold, hard analysis.
To cut it as a designer, I had to come up with tricks & tactics I could apply to whatever app I was working on in
the moment. I mixed those strategies with the best of what I could find scattered across a myriad of books and
blog posts.
And it worked. Here I am.
Still kickin’. Still designing.
In the interim, I quit a nice, cushy job at Microsoft, made the jump to freelance, and:
Upped my annual pay
Worked with who I wanted, when I wanted
Enjoyed that #freelancelife unlimited unpaid vacation 😉
On top of that, my wife and I spent a year literally circling the globe on a trip we’ll never
forget. It was an amazing opportunity, but it was only possible because UI design is a valuable skill
that businesses are willing to pay top dollar for.
Whatever reason you have for learning UI design — whether it’s getting a job, freelancing, launching a
side project, or just upping your skills — I think you’ll find Learn UI Design is the very best way
to do it.
Join thousands of happy students — it’s time to master UI design.
Learn UI Design is great! Tons of ACTIONABLE tips and hours of practical advice on all important design topics – positioning, alignment, spacing, typography, colour… What I found to be the best part is when Erik fires up Sketch to show you how to apply the theory on real UI designs. I feel much more confident when approaching a new design project after going through the course!”
I've gone to art school and done a lot of online courses, but this is the first design course that just gets to the meat of what I need to learn to level up. There's no fluff. Every lesson is packed with useful content and exercises.”
Hey Erik, I’ve got a success story – I landed a dream job in a world-class design agency. Learn UI Design helped make it happen. Thanks again for the valuable course – I return to the videos often.”
Of all the money I’ve spent learning this is hands down the best investment (MUCH more valuable than the bootcamp that cost 10x as much)”
This is one hell of a well-planned course. It's like learning how to fly a plane by actually sitting in the cockpit with the pilot – Erik is constantly designing/redesigning real-world examples right in front of you, explaining why X is good or bad, and how to go about making it even better.”
Learn UI Design is the ONLY course I’ve found that provides the reasoning *why* this design choice is better than another… I feel like I owe you a personal thank you for taking the time to provide me with the *why* behind the design decisions… The course is worth every single penny.”
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