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What is Skillshare?

Most people have experienced the feeling of discovering a new topic they would love to learn more about but end up not following through when the barrier to entry seems too high. In the past, you would probably get a book on the topic from your local library. Nowadays, it's become a lot easier to just look it up on the internet and maybe watch some YouTube videos that pop up in the search results. This method of learning can be great to get some entry-level knowledge of some broadly-offered topics but for more specific topics, it can also more easily lead to misunderstandings which increases the likelihood of you giving up on learning more about the topic. Sites like YouTube are full of people trying to teach you new things who often don’t have the right knowledge or credentials of that topic you’re looking to learn more about. You can also run into many other issues like watching a video series only to later discover it isn’t complete.

These are some of the problems that course platforms like Skillshare fix. Skillshare is a website that hosts over 30,000 online video classes. These classes cover hundreds of different topics and are created by experts on these topics. The classes aren’t ordinary video classes like you'd find on YouTube and Google. Many classes include different prompts and other ways to stay interactive while learning. If you want to share your work with others, the Skillshare community consists of over seven million creators with whom you can collaborate and share your work. Using the Skillshare app, you can even continue learning while you’re on the road or when you don’t have access to your computer. A Skillshare premium membership starts at around $14 per month but luckily they offer a generous trial period with which you can try skillshare out for a few weeks. For most people, the length of this trial period will probably be more than enough to learn about a certain topic you're interested in.

Why use Skillshare's free trial?

Many people that want to learn about new subjects on the internet, quickly turn to free websites like YouTube to find tutorials and how-to videos. Most tutorials on non-curated platforms like YouTube, however, don’t have a lot of credibility or production value, unfortunately. You'll often be unsure about who is teaching you and what their experience is. Besides that, being able to find the right videos is often hard and may even turn out to be incomplete when you find them. Skillshare provides the solution to this problem. By providing a large collection of video classes that are all made and presented by industry experts, you can be sure the classes are more complete, in-depth and of a higher quality than those on other sites.

How to use Skillshare's free trial?

It’s pretty easy to get started using the Skillshare Premium trial. All you have to do is create an account, to access the basic features of Skillshare. After you’ve signed in, you can start your free trial to try out all the features Skillshare Premium has to offer. You simply start your trial by selecting a membership that you think fits you well and entering your details. After that, you can simply cancel to prevent getting charged at the end of the trial.

Using Skillshare's free trial to get better at design

Skillshare offers a wide variety of different classes that you can choose from. They range from classes about business to more creative classes like ones that cover topics like illustration or logo design. If you want to learn more about a creative subject, Skillshare is one of the best options out there. Many famous graphic designers, logo designers, and typographers have their own classes that cover all kinds of subjects and they have one of the biggest libraries of creative classes. Skillshare also allows you to share your finished work with the Skillshare community so you can receive feedback and ultimately improve your work even further. The way that Skillshare works, makes it a lot more useful for learning about design than other course platforms. Classes do not only try to tell you what to do, but they also offer an interactive experience for you to work with. Many classes also offer various resources that you can use in your learning process, making Skillshare a more efficient way to learn design. These resources can be anything from practice projects to templates you can use for your own projects.

Using Skillshare's free trial for other subjects

Skillshare isn’t only a great site for learning about design and other creative subjects. They recently added a lot of other classes that have to do with subjects like business, productivity, and marketing. These classes can be incredibly useful if you want to learn about leadership and how to set up your own business. While these classes don't seem to be applicable to creatives like graphic designers, they shouldn't be overlooked if you're in those fields. Creatives often need a basic understanding of business practices while they're often self-employed.

Skillshare features

Skillshare pricing

The pricing for a Skillshare premium subscription has fluctuated quite a bit. While Skillshare used to offer subscriptions for different billing periods, they currently only offer a subscription that is paid yearly. The price for this subscription comes down to $168 per year. Luckily you can first use your trial period that lasts up to three months.

Skillshare mobile app

Like most of the other course platforms, Skillshare also offers a free-to-download mobile app. This app is, however, quite a bit more extensive than the other course apps. Besides being able to simply watch the course classes, you can also look at course projects and download classes so you can watch them offline or on-the-go.

Community

Another major feature of the Skillshare platform is the ability to share your finished works with other students. This can help you improve even further using feedback from others, including the course teachers.

Skillshare compared to other course platforms

Besides Skillshare, there are lots of other course platforms that work like Skillshare. If you are looking to learn more about some of the other course platforms and want to compare them against Skillshare, check out the posts below.

• LinkedIn Learning (Lynda) vs Skillshare
• Skillshare vs Brilliant
• Skillshare vs Masterclass

Recommended premium trial classes on Skillshare

Because of the large number of classes offered on Skillshare, it might be hard to find classes that you would like to follow. This is a small list of some of the best classes that Skillshare has to offer. These classes are for premium users so make sure to start your free trial to watch these classes.

Logo Design with Draplin: Secrets of Shape, Type, and Color

Aaron Draplin is one of the top teachers on Skillshare and his classes are some of the most-watched classes on design on the website. Draplin is the founder of his own graphic design company 'Draplin Design Company' and has years of experience working as a designer. This course goes over the process of designing a family crest while Aaron Draplin explains the whole process in a fun and engaging way.

Photography Essentials: Understanding the Basics

Whether you use your phone or a DSLR camera, everyone, at least once in a while, takes pictures these days. Even if you aren't a professional photographer, it can always be helpful to learn more about photography. This class will go over the basics of photography and will help to make your pictures look more professional. This class is one hour and 30 minutes long and is taught by professional photographer Sean Dalton.

Mastering Illustration: Sketching, Inking & Color Essentials

Skillshare is the perfect course platform to find classes on creative topics. Besides topics like logo design and photography, you can find a lot of Skillshare classes on topics like illustration. This class is taught by popular YouTuber and illustrator Jazza. In it, he goes over the entire illustration process and explains the essentials like brainstorming, sketching, inking, and using color, to help you get better at illustration.

Learn Guitar: The Complete Beginners Guide

Besides the many classes covering creative topics like design and illustration that Skillshare has to offer, they also list a ton of classes that you can use to, for example, get better at your hobbies or help you find your next passion. If you want to get better at, let's say, playing the guitar, this class you'd be the perfect one for you. The class is taught by Marc Barnacle, a full-time musician who's been playing guitar for over 20 years. It's the perfect class for beginners as it covers playing the guitar from the beginning and is geared specifically towards beginners.

E-Commerce Essentials: How to Start a Successful Online Business

In recent years, Skillshare has grown its library of classes substantially. Even when it comes to the different topics that Skillshare classes are covering, you can now learn about a way more diverse set of topics. Some of the categories that recently got added, and have also grown to be some of the top categories, are the entrepreneurship classes. More and more people are wanting to start their own business but it can be hard to find many honest experts covering it without having to go through the thousands of people that are only looking to sell you something. If you are one of these people that is looking to start their own business, this might be the perfect class for you. It is aimed at beginners and covers all the basics you need to know about when starting your own online business.

Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design

Although this class is shorter than most classes, it's one of the best classes to start off learning more about graphic design and even if you're not interested in becoming a graphic designer, this class is still very inspiring. The class is taught by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips, two experts in the field of graphic design and the class covers the five essentials in graphic design, learning to critique your work, and applying what you are learning to your future projects.

Digital Illustration: Learn to Use Procreate

If you are interested in learning more about illustration and more specifically, digital illustration, this is a class to watch. Among digital illustrators, Procreate is an app that pretty much changed the way digital illustrators work and has made the field of digital illustration a lot more accessible. When digital illustrators previously had to buy drawing tablets that could cost up to thousands of dollars, people can now use Procreate on their $500 iPad. If you have an iPad and are interested in digital illustration, try it out and this will be the perfect class for you.

Frame a Great Shot: Exploring Photo Composition | Learn with EyeEm

Another subject that you can learn more about on Skillshare is photography. Even if you are not really into photography, this class should be interesting to most people as everyone takes pictures nowadays. Although this class is marked as 'intermediate', it's worth trying out the course to see if it fits your experience level.

Free classes on Skillshare

Besides the classes that are made for Skillshare premium users, Skillshare used to offer quite a lot of classes for free. Unfortunately, though, nearly all the free Skillshare classes were recently converted to regular Skillshare premium classes. This means that you can't watch classes anymore without signing up for Skillshare premium. Luckily, Skillshare still offers a generous free trial that gives you more than enough time to try out all the classes you think you'd like.