Illustration (Taught)

MA Illustration encourages practitioners to question the nature of their own practice, its context and place within the creative industries and beyond
The course offers an expansive notion of illustration exploring the relationships between illustrator as author, audience/artifice, and site or context, and the contemporary blurring of boundaries across disciplines. Ideas are researched and developed through specific individual approaches to practical research and reflective enquiry and applied using appropriate media and techniques. The course is suitable for students who are open to engagement with a diverse range of creative ideas and possibilities, from traditional illustration techniques including drawing and printmaking, to digital lens-based and time-based media, exhibition and performance.

The MA Illustration course encourages you to question the nature of your practice and its context and position relative to the creative industries. The MA Illustration course encourages you to engage imaginatively with your practice in relation to the evolving academic subject and practice of illustration.

What you will learn
The course is structured and delivered in order to encourage and support you in developing your own distinct visual language, recognising an expansive understanding of contemporary illustration through the exploration of relationships between illustrator as author, audience and context.

This Illustration Master’s course is designed to appeal to students who are open to engagement with a diverse range of creative approaches and possibilities from traditional methods including drawing and printmaking, to lens and time based media, with ideas that might be realised through exhibition, publication or exciting new hybrid forms. As a particular characteristic of the discipline of illustration, the integration of different media is recognised and encouraged with in the inter-disciplinary nature of this MA course. It is a methodology that can lead smoothly to the realisation of meaningful collaborative outcomes as well as distinct and individual approaches. The course is structured and supportive and will encourage you to further your own ideas and to realise your aspirations for future employment and freelance practice.

The MA Illustration course encourages you to engage imaginatively with your practice in relation to the evolving academic subject and practice of illustration. Your work will be considered in a global context, and critically examine the emergence of approaches that challenge orthodox practices. As a graduate from the MA programme, you will be able to carve your own niche in an evolving market for visual materials.

By the end of the course you will be able to...

• Encourage intellectual progression by providing a stimulating forum for critical debate and inter-disciplinary approaches to practice.

• Support you in developing the research methods and skills required in the gathering, sampling and analysing of data, in order to find and solve complex problems.

• Encourage you to reflect critically on your achievements and to evaluate them within a challenging environment that will enable you to meaningfully extend your practice professionally and/or toward PhD study.

• Enable you to develop professional maturity and to understand and discuss your work in the context of your discipline as well as the social, political and cultural spheres in which your work will be situated.

• Develop a rich cultural community that actively engages creative practice in issues of ethics, sustainability and the political.

Course Modules

Modules: deconstructing practice; professional development portfolio; research methodologies and design processes; strategies for practice; master’s project.