MA Graphic Branding and Identity

University of the Arts London

On MA Graphic Branding and Identity, you’ll explore the strategic thinking underlying brands and look at how that strategy can drive creative expression.

MA Graphic Branding and Identity is a course for designers, by designers. Together, we’ll explore the capacity of the graphic designer to construct and deconstruct powerful brand narratives through design research, visual experimentation and written evaluation. MA Graphic Branding and Identity encourages you to challenge what is understood about the meaning of graphic branding.

You’ll have a graphic design or visual communication background and will be looking to develop a wider range of skills, build a research profile and enhance your capabilities and offer to potential employers.

This MA course focuses on the role of visual identity within branding, with the aim to produce versatile and creative practitioners who understand design within a business, social and cultural context.

What can you expect?

MA Graphic Branding and Identity will challenge you to deconstruct your experience and design education in new and unexpected ways. You’ll develop a brand from the ground-up, using old and new strategies to push your design practice in new directions.

You’ll take part in a weekly lecture or workshop series on the principles of design and branding, learn new research techniques and connect these to rigorous methods of design exploration.

Your study will be based on personal project work, augmented with critical and contextual debate, culminating in an industry-focused portfolio of graphic brand expressions.

You’ll integrate visual practice with written evaluation critical discourse, which will be embedded into your weekly seminars and tutorial contact.

You’ll meet a personal tutor on a regular basis, who will help guide you through a challenging, highly-satisfying period of personal and professional development.

You’ll work with a wide range of designers and practitioners, as well as an experienced core team of tutors and researchers.

You’ll collaborate with other students, staff and external clients in a guided collaborative unit, allowing you to develop new approaches to design and brand projects.

Learning at this level will be about intellectual engagement, discovery, interaction and change. The final product, for us, is not in itself the goal - it is the research, evaluation and understanding of branding and identity that makes this MA distinctive. This course is taught within the Branding and Design Innovation programme of the Design School.