Design (Communication) (Taught)

Build on your knowledge and practical experience of illustration, graphic design and other communication media to explore how social, critical and technological paradigms are reshaping visual communication. Create a feature project prototype or series of artefacts, developed from concept to display for an external client.

Build upon your knowledge and practical experience of illustration, graphic design and other communication media to explore the way current social, critical and technological paradigms are changing the way designers create and distribute narrative-driven artefacts or brand-led campaigns.

This course pushes the boundaries of how we structure and convey stories and subjects through an interdisciplinary community of practice, challenging you to deepen your personal style and approach and develop the theoretical and practical skills to explore how that style can be expressed across many media and sectors.

At a glance

• Award: MA Design (Communication)

• Who it’s for: previous study or experience in graphic design, illustration, photography or marketing

• Project outcome: a feature project prototype or series of artefacts developed from concept to display for an external client

Developing your style and visual methodology

This course will challenge you to deepen your personal style and approach and develop the theoretical and practical skills necessary to explore how this style can be expressed across many media and sectors.

You will learn how to develop new, emerging ideas into a visual methodology that speaks successfully in a crowded contemporary visual culture.

Working with briefs, partners and real-world challenges

You will have the opportunity to work collaboratively or with external partners on briefs that prioritise co-design, participation and reflective evaluation as a process that will give you the confidence to work generatively.

This course aims to expand the potential reach and form of your designs. You will be encouraged to research and identify a compelling social, environmental or business challenge made visible or more accessible through your designs, culminating in a feature project prototype or series of artefacts developed through a full journey, culminating in a feature project prototype or series of artefacts developed from concept to display for an external client.

Visual language beyond words

You will strengthen your ability to use visual language (form, colour, type, motion, light, image, character) in a dialogic process that captures the expressive potential of communication beyond words at the threshold between language and lived experience.

Workshops, tools and how your work takes shape

Through your study you will have access to an extensive programme of practical workshops and material and digital resources for experimenting with how your work takes shape. You will have the opportunity to test how both traditional and emerging technologies might inspire new ways of realising your designs and ideas.

Why choose this course?

• Build upon your previous study or experience in graphic design, illustration, photography or marketing to focus on a research project that will give you a broad cultural perspective on visual communication design.

• Learn within a multidisciplinary community of practitioners supported by a regular visiting lecture programme of industry professionals and leading designers.

• Professionalise your ideas by working with an external client or real-world challenge, helping you to build industry connections that sustain your career after you graduate.

Careers and future opportunities

Career opportunities include: Communication Designers, Graphic Designers, Visual Designers, Illustrators, Brand Designers, Interface Designers, Storyboard Designers and Packaging Designers.

Course Modules

The comprehensive Masters structure, which is shared across our specialist subjects, is a taught degree which enables a focus on creative strategies and processes through three sequential units which support you in investigating, testing and developing your ideas. The core tuition focuses on training, research methodology, critical thinking, design, practice-led research methods and professional and conceptual frameworks. All of our programmes have access to outstanding workshop facilities in the university.

A unique component of our postgraduate curriculum is a programme of Research Intensives which invites all MA students to participate in short format, deep learning sessions in areas of creative expertise led by the university’s research-active staff and external specialists. These Research Intensives enrich subject-specific study with adjacent practices, cultural theories, and creative methodologies that will challenge historical assumptions of your subject and inspire innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches, giving you the opportunity to lead your discipline with original insights.

You will be supported in your MA study by a Subject Tutor who is a specialist in your chosen discipline, to provide a consistent touchstone for the critical development and formal progression of your creative or theoretical work. In addition to your Subject Tutor, you will have ongoing tutorials, critiques, and discipline-specific seminars taught by other members of the postgraduate faculty who lead the curriculum units.

By combining learning units with specialist assignments and personal project proposals, you will be able to achieve depth and specialisation within your subject area, while at the same time develop a critical methodology through techniques that can be applied across the commercial, social and public sectors.

All students are asked to submit an initial statement on application to the course. This sets out your ideas for the MA programme you have selected. Creative practice is about change and development, and this statement will form the starting point for a dialogue about your work and your study journey.