BA (Hons) - Graphic Design (with integrated foundation year)

Year one

In your foundation year, you will develop the core skills needed to progress onto our BA (Hons) Graphic Design course. During this time, you will work with students from across art, design and media disciplines, exploring your place in the wider creative community.

• Introducing Creative Research Practice
  Begin to build the knowledge, skills and ways of working to become a creative practitioner.
• Seeing, Thinking, Making Meaning
  Learn more about the history and theory of the creative arts and work with others to discuss why context is so important.
• Ideas, Images and Objects
  Begin to apply your skills and develop your own individual creative projects.
• Innovation Lab
  Work with others to test out ideas through making and breaking to explore innovative ways of working.
• Creative Industries Toolkit
  Learn more about the industries you will work in and acquire the professional skills and attributes you will need to succeed.
• Creative Playbook
  Have the opportunity to negotiate your own brief with support from your tutors and apply all the knowledge and skills you have gathered throughout the year.

Year two

In this year, you’ll gain fundamental knowledge and practical experience of visual communication, the building blocks of visual language and professional attitudes and practices.

• Introducing Visual Communication
  Develop effective working practices and habits.
• Cultural Contexts
  An introduction to the cultural, historical, and social contexts in which creative work from a range of disciplines.
• Multi-Dimensional Graphic Design
  Explore multiple forms and formats, from traditional print to the latest digital platforms, simple symbols to complex information and ideas, ephemeral to iconic.
• Collaborative Practice
  Work with other students to explore and practice the skills involved in creative collaboration.

Year three

This year is focused on applying the knowledge and skills you’ve gained to a series of design challenges. Testing and refining your design and personal management skills in a number of scenarios will give you confidence in your ability to tackle unfamiliar challenges. As your confidence grows through experience you’ll begin to develop your own, personal stands of interest or specialism.

• The Designer's Toolkit
  Explore the structural elements that are essential when creating any piece of graphic design - alignment, hierarchy, contrast, repetition, proximity, balance, colour, and space.
• Type & Typography
  Explore letterforms and how they can be manipulated and arranged to inform, entice, and communicate lies.
• Graphic Design Projects
  Develop conceptual skills and an individual approach to graphic design problem-solving, providing the springboard to your final year of study.
• The Critical Designer
  Explore key contextual debates which impact production and the reading of graphic design texts. Consider design as a form of social practice.

Year four

Flexibility is most evident in this final year where all of the skills, knowledge and confidence you have developed so far is brought together to produce a portfolio of design work that showcases your talents. With your career aspirations or personal research interests in mind, you’ll have a high degree of freedom in choosing what type of work you want to develop.

• Advanced Design Projects
  An opportunity to work within a design brief and explore a particular area of interest.
• Independent Research Paper
  Develop specialised and focused knowledge and understanding of a subject of your own choice.
• Graphic Design Showcase
  An opportunity to show-off the skills, knowledge, and professionalism developed throughout the course to potential employers and the wider world.