Entrepreneurial Graphic Design COA

The curriculum in this certificate provides foundational entrepreneurial preparation for students entering a freelance graphic design career and/or starting a small graphic design business. The certificate combines the entry-level small-business management and marketing skills and intermediate/advanced graphic design skills needed to participate as an entrepreneur in the graphic design profession.

The estimate is for 5 -10 students to earn this certificate within 2 academic years. Program growth continues to develop as more students are aware of our program which officially launched Fall '16. We project 2 cohorts (4 years), form the time the COA is available, will see reliable data for future projections beyond this.

The Certificate of Achievement in Graphic Design will help Rio Hondo College’s students to achieve the educational goal of workforce readiness. This certificate will help students secure entrepreneurial business skills in addition to marketable graphic design skills. These skills will assist students in the obtaining, contracting and completion of freelance and/or small graphic design business work. These skills will also assist students in starting their own small business in graphic design and related industries. Examples of the work include but are not limited to: web design, apparel design (custom t-shirts & totes), signage (banners, windows), business identity & promotion (cards, brochures), packaging design (Etsy and other entrepreneurial small business start-ups) etc. The certificate’s goals are to help students build necessary business and design skills and empower them to market and run their own freelance or small business enterprise. The certificate’s goals will be achieved by providing students with the ability to understand and implement small business practices with their graphic design skills in instructor and industry supervised environments. Students will need to demonstrate their ability to understand how to market, manage, contract and produce industry-appropriate work. The certificate’s goals will also be achieved by and by constantly aligning the course offerings with the frequently evolving trends in the print and digital design industry. This certificate enhances the current graphic design COAs with the current AS and AA and in-progress AST.

Course	Title	Units	Year/Semester (Y1 or S1)

Pass the following courses with a grade of C or better: 

MGMT 130 Small Business Management-Entrepreneurship

MRKT 174 Small Business Marketing and Advertising

GDSN 290 Cooperative Work Experience/Internship for Graphic Design Related Fields

GDSN 299 Directed Study in Graphic Design

Choose a minimum of 9 units from the following:

GDSN 110 History of Graphic Design

GDSN 151* Typographical Design

GDSN 163* Intermediate Web Design

GDSN 165* Branding & Identity Design

GDSN 174* Packaging Design

*Prerequisite exists for these courses

Graphic Design

We have not found a similar entrepreneurial design certificate program at other colleges in the Los Angeles and Orange County Region.

Estimate is for 5 10 students to earn this certificate within an academic year. Program growth continues to develop as more students are aware of our program which officially launched Fall '16. We project 2 cohorts (4 years) will see reliable data for future projections.