BA (Hons) Graphic Design

On BA (Hons) Graphic Design, you have the option to take a specialised Integrated Foundation Year, or Year 0.

The Integrated Foundation year allows you to explore and develop your skills and knowledge at an introductory level, gaining a better understanding of what the subject area has to offer before joining the degree.

All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.

If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.

Students on BA (Hons) Graphic Design have the chance to broaden their horizons through exciting exchange and international summer programmes. These opportunities allow you to study abroad at one of our brilliant partner institutions, experience different cultures, and enhance your academic journey.

The first year provides you with opportunities to develop fundamental skills, principles, processes, and knowledge. These are considered core attributes encompassing the tasks and knowledge expected of all graphic designers. All Level 4 units are designed to provide experience in the studio and computer lab, to promote confidence in using digital processes, methods, and materials essential to the study of graphic design. Additionally, gaining a working knowledge of typography is a key goal for this year, enabling you to effectively structure and arrange information to enhance communication and expression.

This level of study also offers a broader contextual understanding of the subject. Theory and practice are seamlessly integrated across all units. Skills in research, critical analysis, evaluation and communication of interrelated practices and technologies, are delivered to enhance your creative potential.

You'll explore contemporary global themes and issues related to design practice, contributing to the creative dialogue between theory and practice. Alongside incorporating these concepts into their design work, you're encouraged to be curious, take risks, and engage in experimentation – fostering growth as creative individuals who formulate and communicate visual solutions, either independently or collaboratively.

Throughout the year, emphasis is placed on generating and developing ideas. Units such as Exploring Graphic Communication and Visual Thinking will help in developing your typographic skills, visual language, and to the ability to research, experiment and generate ideas tailored to specific audience needs. The final unit in the year, Purposeful Curiosity, serves as a bridge to Level 5. Here, you're introduced to fundamental animation and motion graphic skills while delivering designed solutions. The importance of team working is also recognised within all units and include elements of self-reflection and peer evaluation.

In the second year, you'll consolidate and expand your digital, technical, typographic, design thinking and making skills. You'll identify different perspectives, specialisms, and modes of critical design thinking, within the broader field of graphic design. Furthermore, you'll explore code, moving image and emerging technologies, engaging in individual or collaborative projects with real-world applications. To highlight and celebrate your work, you'll participate in an industry 'Network Event' during the summer term, providing you with opportunities to build your design networks and establish connections within the creative industry.

Units in this year encourage you to engage with the subject from different viewpoints. In Innovate, you're challenged to embrace critical design practice and become agents of change. In Narrative, the focus is on designing motion design sequences and web interactions; you'll explore methods of analysing, constructing, and accessing narratives.

In Experience, you'll be introduced to immersive design and the user-centred agenda, preparing you for Level 6 study and units such as Future Practice. In this way, the Level 5 experience provides a way of scoping different understandings, skills, and methods of working that can inform your thinking in relation to the more self-directed practice, and project-based learning occurring at Level 6.

Theoretical and contextual understanding is broadened and deepened in a variety of ways in Level 5. Ethical and sustainability issues are addressed in units such as Experience and Place where talks and lectures align and integrate with the University’s AUB Human initiative. The Place unit provides opportunities to explore and reflect on practice, in relation to themes and issues that might go on to become the focus of Level 6’s Critical Practice and Major Project as well as future career planning.

The 'Network Event' encourages and supports you to participate in industry placements during summer break, which may help with the start of a career planning process.

In your final year, you'll continue to expand the scope of your skills, delve deeper into critical enquiry, and confirm your personal creative aspirations. You'll develop a strategic approach that directs your individual graphic design practice towards future career destinations. In the units Future Practice and Major Project, a research-oriented approach underpins experimental, disruptive, and speculative methods. This encourages you to take the lead in shaping your own path, empowering your practice. Learning in these units is primarily project-based, emerging from the challenges and nuances of each project.

The Critical Practice unit offers opportunities for advanced independent research, which can complement the Major Project. The integration and consolidation of themes across Level 6 units support and enhance creative practice and career aspirations. Additionally, beyond academic writing, you're expected to use your writing skills for reflecting on and organising ideas and process, messaging, specification, copywriting and pitching ideas.

At Level 6, all units require you to define your study through Learning Agreements, which are negotiated with the teaching team. These agreements provide focus and enable you to demonstrate agency by integrating your own interests and passions into your learning.

The course emphasises an outward-facing perspective, evident through engagement with competition briefs and input from visiting speakers. Project briefs may be ‘ignited’ in workshops led by designers, providing a springboard for research and ideation.