MA Graphic Design (Online) Welcome Guide : Preparing for your course

We're delighted that you've chosen to join our creative community at Arts University Bournemouth. We can't wait to see what you'll create.

Preparing for your course

This welcome pack is designed to give you an idea of what to expect during the first weeks of your course. Please take the time to read it carefully and take particular note of the pre-course preparation. We hope that you'll enjoy a happy and productive time with us, and we look forward to meeting you.

A message from your Programme Leader

Hello there, and congratulations on taking this exciting step in your creative journey! We're so pleased to have you join us.

Whether you're a recent graduate eager to dive deeper into design, a seasoned professional looking to expand your horizons, or someone passionate about exploring the dynamic world of graphic design, this course is designed with you in mind. Together, we'll blend creative practice with research and theory, helping you develop the critical thinking and skills you need to tackle the challenges facing designers today.

What makes our course special? It's flexible enough to fit around your life, combining hands-on practical work with thought-provoking theory. But perhaps most exciting of all is our incredibly diverse community - we have students joining us from all corners of the globe, and the range of perspectives, cultures, and experiences you'll all bring creates such a rich learning environment. We can't wait to see the amazing conversations and collaborations that will emerge!

Over the next few weeks, we'll be getting to know each other, and we're genuinely excited to meet every one of you and hear about what brought you to graphic design.

Here's to an inspiring year ahead!

– Steph Horan and the entire MA Graphic Design (Online) team

Before you join us

As a new student, there'll be lots to read and to do this week. Some of this will be in the form of content to read and to watch in your own time, as well as some scheduled live welcomes from AUB to watch. The course is designed to be asynchronous, which means you can read and watch these at your own pace and at times that are suited to you. Live content is recorded and made available shortly after it takes place.

You’ll find information on the following pages about the various software that you have access to as an AUB student. On the MA Graphic Design (Online) course you will regularly use Microsoft Teams to join in our weekly optional live seminars and Canvas, our VLE, to engage in the weekly course content and forum discussions. We recommend installing Teams on your devices and becoming comfortable with how it runs before the first seminar.

As an AUB student, you have access to LinkedIn Learning, a valuable and extensive resource of video materials detailing how to make full use of the various professional tools and software programs available to you.

Your first Introduction unit is called, Finding your purpose as a designer and content for this will be available on Canvas from 12.00 on 19 September. New content and discussions are released each Friday at 12.00. Unit specific information is delivered by announcements in the unit on Canvas. You’ll also find other course specific information on the MA Graphic Design course hub on Canvas.

Each week of the course, there'll be discussions to be involved in, texts to read and challenges to guide you towards producing your assignments for each unit. Throughout the course we recommend you collate your thoughts, notes, research and drawings into a Reflective Journal. Your journals are part sketchbook, part notebook. Though they're not assessed formally, we recommend using edited parts of them to inform your assessed work. They can be digital or physical – whichever works best for you – but we recommend having easy access to them as a resource for regular documentation, reflection and thinking. You’ll find more information about these in the first unit, but instilling in yourself a regular and productive use of your journal as a space for unedited creation and thinking on the page can be key to a successful creative practice.

For unit specific information and asking questions related to the course we recommend using the various discussion forums available to you on Canvas, where the MA Graphic Design course team can provide help.

Programme Leader Steph Horan can also be contacted via email at shoran@aub.ac.uk – we recommend using your student email to do so, as personal emails can be caught in spam filters.

On the course you will be expected to explore your own skills in graphic design alongside analysing and evaluating the cultural, social and political impact of the discipline. To prepare you for research at this level each unit has a bespoke reading list of ebooks that will be available to you alongside other recorded audio and video content. These ebooks are provided via your AUB student login.

To support and supplement this we also recommend reading the following book as it provides an excellent history of Graphic Design.

Meggs, Philip B., and Alston W. Purvis. Meggs' History of Graphic Design, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central (available online).

Another option is the following, which is available as a physical library book, but also economically ‘used and new’ online if students wish to purchase a copy:

Müller J., Wiedemann J. The History of Graphic Design: Volume 1 (1890–1959). Köln: Taschen.

To prepare you for seeing how graphic design features within contemporary culture we recommend looking at the following sites:

Your first classes

We will be interacting with you via the discussion forums on Canvas from Monday 22 September. These forums can be accessed either via the Canvas Student app on your devices or the browser based version of Canvas accessed via my.aub.ac.uk.

Your first seminar for Introduction and Exploration will take place on Microsoft Teams on:

Friday 26 September, 11.30–12.30 (BST)

A link to this will be available on the seminar page of the Week 1 content for the unit as well as being sent via an announcement.

After this, we'll take a poll for when future seminars will take place based on student numbers and locations. You'll find information about what to prepare for this in the Week 1 content.