Illustration and Visual Media

BA (Hons) Illustration and Visual Media provides a stimulating environment in which you can nurture, develop and realise imaginative ideas.

We’ll encourage you to explore and interrogate a range of established, current and emerging approaches and techniques to develop practices that are innovative and reflect our times.

We encourage a culture of care, responsibility and collaboration. You’ll develop your individual creative identity while learning how to work effectively with others. You’ll be supported to develop as an active agent, able to interpret and respond to set briefs, while engaging with topics and causes that are important to you.

You’ll learn the principles of storytelling for empathetic communication and understand how to research, test and develop your ideas. You’ll gain insights in industry across a range of media and technologies, so that you graduate well-placed to apply your skills in diverse roles and industries.

What to expect

• Multidisciplinary: This is a time of unparalleled opportunities for creative communicators. We encourage you to develop an awareness of the broader social, cultural, and political contexts practitioners operate in, at the same time as questioning, validating, and redefining illustration and visual media.

• Established and Emerging Media: You’ll approach a diverse range of storytelling and narrative projects with curiosity, intellectual rigor, and practicality so that you develop specific technical and transferable skills.

• Intellectual and Creative Freedom: We’ll introduce you to tools and approaches to challenge how illustration and visual media practices are produced, consumed as well as their potential impacts. You’ll respond to briefs independently and collectively in innovative, sustainable, and ethical ways.

• Contemporary Studio Practice: Our studio culture is vibrant, and supportive, emphasising experimentation, investigation, imagination, and invention.

• You’ll cultivate an understanding of contemporary creative practice, critical debate, and academic responsibility through a programme of studio practice, seminars, lectures, workshops, tutorial support and peer-learning.

• Specialist Staff: Our team includes successful professionals from diverse fields, each with their own specialist practice or research. Their expertise directly feeds into our stimulating learning environment, so that you receive the most up-to-date instruction.

Industry experience and opportunities
Our curriculum focuses on collaboration, networking and shared entrepreneurial practices while developing your creative and authentic voice. We promote participatory learning through collaboration with external partners, and encourage students to become responsive, adaptable and resourceful practitioners who can communicate in compelling ways with diverse audiences.

Our fluid understanding of illustration and visual media allows students to uniquely define their practices and acquire the skillsets and attributes to work effectively in a variety of roles across different fields. Students will broaden their opportunities for employability through regularly engaging with industry defined, live and commissioned brief as well as independent projects. Illustration and visual media students graduate with a highly developed showcase of works representative of their practices and relevant to their professional fields of interest.