MA Graphic Design

Students apply to the course predominantly from graphic design courses but are welcomed from a variety of backgrounds (if they can show an aptitude for typography). Students may have studied photography, architecture, illustration, interaction design, three-dimensional design, fine art, or, subjects such as journalism, philosophy, psychology, anthropology or sociology.

Whatever your background, you’ll be required to reflect on your worldview; the underlying assumptions and understanding that guides and constrains your practice, and to use this reflection as a starting point from which to further develop. Your practice can take many forms: it can be self-expressive, or socially orientated; print, screen-based or three-dimensional.

It can focus on an aspect of a well-defined area of design, such as branding, experimental typography, publishing, and user-centred design, or on something more unconventional defined as part of your study.

Graphic designers often work in groups, sometimes comprising members from different disciplines. MA Graphic Design provides many opportunities to work in interdisciplinary ways as it sits alongside the courses of other disciplines. Many of the taught sessions such as the introduction to research methods and processes occur in these interdisciplinary groups. At other times however you’ll be developing your project with your supervisor and other students on your course. This will require you to develop a theoretical framework, methodology and research methods that support your research focus.

As a graphic designer you should anticipate the possible consequences of your design interventions, including the meanings constructed through your practice, in relation to ethical and sustainability issues as well as to other relevant contexts. Creative approaches are required that respond to complex situations in which many problems reside. Outcomes are not constrained by media or by limited interpretations of what it is to be a graphic designer.

Consequently, an outcome might involve the design of an experience or service, as much as it might concern more conventional forms of graphic production.

MA Graphic Design represents an exciting opportunity for you to challenge and build on your previous achievements and to study at an advanced level. The course provides specific discipline-focused project work aimed at enabling you to take the right path towards your chosen career in industry or progress to further study at doctorate level.

The course provides specific discipline-focused project work aimed at enabling you to take the right path towards your chosen career in industry or progress to further study at doctorate level.

Unit 1, Strategies for practice: Materials, methods, contexts

This unit seeks to identify and critically review the attitudes and understanding underlying your graphic design practice. It begins with a critique of conventional understanding of the communication process. It introduces theories from the cognitive humanities, such as frame theory, primary metaphor theory, and conceptual metaphor theory and applies these to your practice through a number of assignments. You will be encouraged to return, through practice, to an engagement with the fundamental elements and language of graphic design

You will be encouraged to reflect in-action as you respond to a series of assignments that will challenge assumptions about graphic design and the nature of communication and which will encourage you to scope possible areas for deeper enquiry.

Unit 2, The Master’s project 1: Investigate, propose, experiment

This unit marks a shift from a predominantly taught, toward a supervisory, mode of study. You’ll engage in experimentation and primary and secondary research around a focus of study that you will define in consultation with the course team. This exploration is directed toward the development of a Study Plan which defines the project that will be refined and implemented in the final unit.

Unit 3, Master’s project 2: Resolution, presentation and evaluation

The final unit sustains and fuses your engagement with theory, research methods, experimentation and the context of your focus of study through practice and presentations to students and staff.

Throughout the course, you’ll produce a Contextual Journal providing a means to gather evidence in support of your career aspirations and as a way of documenting your practice.

We’re highly aware of and very responsive to, the needs and professional aspirations of graduates as they progress to meet the future demands of the professional work-related environment. In this respect we’re committed to keeping up with new trends within graphic design and its allied fields.

Part-time pathway
The part-time pathway is carried out over a period of 90 weeks – rather than 45 weeks as in the full–time pathway.