BA (Hons) Graphic Design (Full Time)

The course aims to prepare students for professional practice, whilst also creating the freedom to pursue personal lines of enquiry in a fully supportive learning environment.

Course overview

The BA Graphic design course team believes that the future of the discipline depends on the ability of visual communicators to operate as cultural architects. As such, conventional notions of the graphic designer as a passive receiver of information are replaced, with a system that encourages students to become instigators in the research and design process. This enables our undergraduates to sustain a breadth and depth of enquiry across a wide range of visual communication endeavours.

Students need a skills set that will allow them to react to developments in culture, concepts and technological change. However, if the boundaries of graphic design are to expand, education must create opportunities to challenge the status quo.

We aim to provide students with the knowledge needed to survive in the design industry as it is today. We also want to create a platform from which students can push the discipline and profession through experiment, exploration, and the development of a personal visual language.

You will be encouraged to enter industry set competitions and the course has a long history of achievement in these schemes, producing many award-winning students and graduates. The course also offers opportunities for students to choose their own subject areas, to research and develop over an extended time frame.

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Course content

Year 1

Six core units:

• Introduction to the Design Process (core)
• Design Exploration (core)
• Introduction to Typography (core)
• Image Design (core)
• Digital Design (core)
• Design in Context (core).

Year 2

Four core units and three option units:

• Solution Process (core)
• Graphic Structure (core)
• Independent Project Book (option)
• ndependent Project Print (option)
• Competitive Context (core)
• New Media Design 1 and 2 (core)
• Curriculum Plus (option).

Three core units:

• Professional Context (core)
• Final Major Project (core)
• Visual Communication Research Project (core) 

Why choose this course? 

• Experiment with a wide variety of media, both digital and ‘by hand’.
• High level of success in recognised national design competitions.
• Offers a wide range of graphic facilities including letterpress, screen printing, printmaking, photographic studios, darkrooms, and Apple Macintosh suites.
• The course offers a student wishing to study graphic design, a broad range of opportunities to create a unique portfolio that will build the foundations for a career in the profession or post graduate study.

Assesment

Projects, presentations, group projects, group critiques and the final year project. Key review points are used to enhance feedback and help improve your performance.

Key career skills

Creative thinking, presentation, project management, visual communication, evaluation and problem solving.

Project work

• Recent project work can be viewed on the courses own dedicated website www.southamptongraphics.co.uk. It contains an electronic exhibition of last year’s final degree show, multimedia work and a selection of the course’s publications.
• Professional briefs, from industry set award schemes and client briefs from the design industry.

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Graduate profile

Diana Garcia

“This course gave me the opportunity to develop the skills needed to become an independent and confident graphic designer. The best thing about the course was the opportunity to express and explore my own ideas. There were no restrictions. I had the freedom to experiment and grow as a designer. Each year provided me with a better understanding of visual communication and the design process.

I am now doing an internship, working full time in the London-based design studio, where I am able to put all the skills and knowledge gained during my degree course into practice in the professional world!

Paul Mathews

“Winning the overall award for the ‘Chartered Society of Designers’ was a real confidence booster in my second year, and it made a real difference to my exit portfolio.”

Paul Jones

“I was part of the team that applied for, and won, funds to complete an advertising campaign for the British Heart Foundation. This ‘live’ project allowed us to design and organise a campaign with a large print budget attached.”