Art & Design: Graphic Communication

Course summary

This creative course encourages you to develop your skills as a practicing designer. You will be introduced to a variety of projects with the intention to build on your design skills, both digital and hand-made. You will build a portfolio of work as a result of this before consolidating your learning within a personal investigative project and an externally set assignment. On this course, you are encouraged to experiment with a range of graphic processes. Drawing, mark-making, print making, typography, illustration, photography, digital design and animation (including the Adobe Creative Cloud suite) are just some of the techniques explored. You will also develop a critical understanding of contextual sources that support and develop your designs. Students are required to work in one or more area(s) of Graphic communication, such as those listed below. They may explore overlapping areas and combinations of areas: interactive media (including web, app and game design), advertising, packaging design, design for print, illustration, communication graphics, branding, multimedia, motion graphics and design for film and television. Assessment takes place regularly on the course to provide feedback to develop your visual artwork and written components (through one-to-one support and group critiques of work). The course contains two assessed components: a personal investigation portfolio (60%) and an externally set assignment (40%).