Surface Pattern Design (Textile for Fashion) (Swansea College of Art) MDes

Our Surface Pattern Design degree course at Swansea College of Art UWTSD is a vibrant, multidisciplinary programme where we explore textiles, materiality, pattern and making in the far-reaching contexts of fashion, interiors, object and design led galleries. The programme sits in a cluster of courses within Surface Pattern Design– this is a great benefit to our students who can thrive on the collaborative, interdisciplinary study that is possible.The course is academically challenging, contemporary in outlook, and students are taught a wealth of practical and technical skills, enjoying the design potential of our extensive digital and more traditional facilities. The Surface Pattern Design course offers the best training and facilities to prepare our graduates for creative jobs such as fashion textile designers, print designers, accessory designers, entrepreneurs and makers. We are a materials-based course with textiles at the core, we don’t limit ourselves by material discipline! Students explore cloth, paper, metal, wood, plastics, ceramics, glass – then they decide where they take it. We encourage student individuality across our flexible pathway structure rather than enforce a house style. Demands for originality, innovation, professionalism and relevance are paramount in steering the individual to identify their own distinct voice within a highly competitive graduate market.The four pathways - Textiles for Fashion, Fashion Object, Textiles for Interiors, and Maker, are all housed within our fantastic studio space allowing a great platform for learning and collaboration. A rigorous and lively approach to design process is fostered across our excellent facilities. Students are given the freedom to innovate, explore the boundaries of what is on offer and encouraged to play, supported by a structured programme of workshops and tutorial engagement.Drawing and primary research is an important aspect to our programme and is taught from the beginning to the end of the course in so many different ways. Every student is encouraged to find their own personal language through these experiences. Our graduates know how to contextualise their work. Over the course of their three years this is something that becomes more individual and our graduates are fearless in terms of where they will go, who they will ask and what they discover. Over the past couple of years there have been foreign study trips to the Netherlands, Italy, India and Paris. Our graduates know how to facilitate research to inform their studio practice.We believe in handling creativity and employability in equal measure - often these elements will be separated in the HE learning experience, but not here in Surface Pattern Design. You will find them intertwined through every project that you work on, it becomes second nature. Our students graduate as designers and makers ready to flourish in a wide range of creative employment, having had significant live projects, exhibition experiences and industry liaisons embedded in their studies.Surface Pattern Design is well staffed with highly experienced designers, artists and lecturers delivering a finely tuned programme that is highly relevant to current creative industry practices. Live projects are built in where opportunities allow, in many instances with long held industry liaisons, and in other cases in an ad hoc nature reflecting trends that are happening in the design industry and invitations from the outside world. These are built in from year one. Recent live projects have been undertaken with H&M, Eley Kishimoto and Jayne Pierson to name but a few. As a programme we are driven to ensure that you graduate doing something that you love, something that you are brilliant at and something that you can sustain