The course of training for graphic designers at the Basel School of Arts and Crafts lasts five years, the first year being a preliminary followed by four years of professional training.
The preliminary course afford a basic artistic training with particular emphasis on three special creative fields: drawing, handling colors, and spatial thinking. This tuition is intended to provide the fundamental knowledge needed in those professions in which surface, solids and space are given shape and design. The student familiarizes himself with the rudiments: instruments such as pencils, and blushes which make marks; dimensions such as length, breadth and depth which create size; the rules of division; and ways and means of combining several elements according to the laws of composition. Often he has to be taken take back to his preschool days; he has to shed faulty habits and get to know from the inside what it means to do original work with the basic materials of his crafts.