Undergraduate Certificate - Visual Communications

The undergraduate certificate in Visual Communications introduces you to the basic fundamentals of graphic design, animation, image manipulation, image enhancement, and image storage. You’ll learn how to design, develop, and deploy moving text and graphics to create dynamic and interactive digital experiences. This online program also provides an introduction to website design and development to help you obtain a well-rounded set of visual design skills. This certificate program is intended for undergraduate students who seek to heighten their knowledge of visual communication without committing to an academic degree program.

This hands-on program covers the Site Development Associate curriculum and the Web Design curriculum of the CIW Web Foundations Associate certification. After completing this certificate, you may consider pursuing your CIW Web Design Specialist® certification.

CIW Web Design Specialist® is a registered trademark of Certification Partners, LLC.

Certificate Objectives

Upon successful completion of this certificate, the student will be able to:

• Discuss the purpose and usage of smart objects, layers and vectors in editing, also differentiate between a raster image and a vector image; also detail the layer concepts of hiding, linking, and setting layer styles.
• Detail the capabilities of Adobe Photoshop® as a tool for editing and restoring digital images; also describe the process for enhancing digital images by manipulating sharpness, color, contrast, hue, brightness, and resolution.
• Appraise the principles and concepts of effective design for organizing information, for performing site design, and for determining the navigation structure.
• Assess the principles for designing web pages, including the content, typography, colors, images, and page layout; also examine the use of style sheets to enhance reusability and to design consistent interfaces.
• Compare and contrast the various image file formats on the Web, including GIF, JPG, PNG, and SVG.
• Assess the utility of Adobe Flash® technology in streaming animations in website design; also assess the use of tweens, anchors, guides, and onion skins to develop Web animations.

Adobe Photoshop® is a registered trademark of Adobe.

Adobe Flash® is a registered trademark of Adobe.