MA Communication Design

Arts University Plymouth

MA Communication Design builds upon your knowledge and practice experience of Illustration, Graphic Design and other communication media to explore how current social, critical and technological paradigms are changing how designers create and distribute narrative-driven artefacts or brand-led campaigns.

The course pushes the boundaries of how we structure and convey stories and subjects through an interdisciplinary community of practice which will challenge you to deepen your own personal style and approach to develop the theoretical and practical skills necessary to explore how this style can be expressed across many media and sectors. As a research-led, studio-based course, you will also learn how to develop new, emerging ideas into a visual methodology that speaks successfully in a crowded contemporary visual culture, whether honing your own brand or developing a visual signature on behalf of clients.

You will have the opportunity to work collaboratively or with external partners on briefs that prioritise co-design, participation and reflective evaluation as a process that will give you the confidence to work generatively, extending your practice through a framework for listening and responding to others whose perspectives are different from your own. As a creative practitioner whose work often transmits the stories, messages, and experiences of others, you will strengthen your ability to use visual language-form, colour, type, motion, light, image, character-in a dialogic process that captures the expressive potential of communication beyond words at the threshold between language and lived experience.

As a course that aims to expand the potential reach and form of your designs, you will be encouraged to research and identify a compelling social, environmental or business challenge made visible or more accessible through your designs, culminating in a feature project prototype or series of artefacts developed from concept to display for an external client.

Through your study you will have access to an extensive programme of practical workshops, as well as material and digital resources such as our Imprint Lab, Digital Print Bureau, Fab Lab, Multimedia Studios and Equipment Resource Centre for experimenting with how your work takes shape, giving you the opportunity to test how both traditional and emerging technologies might inspire new ways of realising your designs and ideas. These practical experiments are supported by an ongoing programme of visiting lectures by national and international experts, and through opportunities to publish your work through placements with a range of businesses and clients and local, regional and national design competitions.