Graphic Design BA(Hons)

During your first year, you’ll be encouraged to explore, experiment and question new creative processes and practices, through both thinking and making. This will deepen your understanding of the breadth of the subject and will begin to shape the future of your unique creative journey. You’ll be part of a supportive and innovative studio culture, where together you’ll learn to grow your skills, develop multiple ideas, and embrace creative risk. 

A variety of briefs, workshops, lectures, and presentations will introduce you to design process, visual language, collaboration, and storytelling. 

Modules

Design is?

On this module, you will develop a hands-on understanding of what graphic design is, considering in some detail the creative processes and idea-generation techniques that help define the subject. Through playful, experimental, and disruptive ways of working, you'll broaden a sense of how key principles, habits and an awareness of your own practice can shape and define a viable design outcome. 

Design from

The way we learn about graphic design is informed by a rich history of practical and critical discussion. This, in turn, shapes our understanding of how contemporary visual messages can be formed and read. This module provides the opportunity to experiment with (and to challenge if necessary) the building blocks of design language, so you can craft clear messages in response to a variety of current communication challenges. 

Design beyond

Here, you’ll practically consider the relationship between design, storytelling and ‘purpose’ when delivering a message. Utilising a variety of media; from human (analogue) through to non-human (AI), and enhanced ways of developing idea generation, you’ll begin to take more ownership of the future direction of the subject (and your degree). 

Design with

This module is the backbone of the course, where you’ll be part of live and/or research-led studio projects, working collaboratively with staff, fellow students (from years 2 & 3), and designers from the wider creative community. Projects will invite you to respond to questions and solutions that can positively impact society and our natural environment. The ambition here is to move your thinking beyond the immediate, and to begin functioning at the forefront of the discipline. 

In your second year, practical, hands-on thinking is re-considered in the light of historical, theoretical, and critical points-of-view. You will consider the process, craft (including the role of evolving technologies), and context of graphic design in much greater depth. You’ll also explore the role of designer as translator, disruptor, collaborator and facilitator.  

Briefs, workshops, lectures, and presentations are complimented by in-depth learning about experience design, brands and consumer culture, typography and information hierarchy, the ethics and responsibility of design practice, design for society and teamwork.  

In exploring these themes, you’ll also be encouraged to consider opposing perspectives to the accepted norms, and to wrestle with the tension these areas of design can create. 

Modules

Design for

Here, you’ll consider how graphic design has been used for facilitating a conversation between message and audience in the delivery of an idea. Experimenting with visual hierarchy, typography, and content creation, together with a broad range of media, branding, and environmental applications, you’ll consider the role design can play in shaping the effective delivery of a point-of-view or strategic goal.  

Design against

On this module, you’ll explore a designer’s place as a radical instigator, activist, and disruptor. There is an urgent need for us to question our actions, become catalysts for change and to consider more fully our responses to the world’s current urgencies (ecology, degrowth, the rich/poor divide, and so on). Historical examples and future scenarios are considered to help develop more radical approaches to behaviour-change in the face of global crisis and how creativity can offer powerful, resilient, and impactful solutions. 

Design towards

Here, you’ll be introduced to the role of designer as an agent of positive social change – asking the question, ‘How do I use my skills to build a better world?’. This module marks a central shift in the focus of the course, where you become both the writer and designer of your own self-authored projects. This will enable you to engage with a range of user-centered communication challenges and the research methods to support social innovation across a variety of sectors. 

Design with

This module creates a more clearly defined platform for research-led studio projects, where you’ll again work collaboratively with students across year groups (years 1 & 3), with staff, and with external partners. Projects respond adaptively to challenges impacting society and the environment – ensuring each opportunity is at the forefront of the discipline. Briefs are often undertaken in partnership with business, NGOs and/or researchers to inform the scope and the potential of cross disciplinary working, and you will adopt a more central role in the life of a design team. 

You can choose to take an optional professional placement after your second year on a three-year programme, or after your third year if you’re studying for a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year. 

You’ll be responsible for finding your own placement, with support from the Employability team. 

Choosing this option will enhance your industry experience and skills while studying. 

How you’ll study during your professional placement

You’ll spend time working in a professional context, as part of a business or organisation. This can be in one role, or up to three, and must be for a minimum of 24 weeks. 

You’ll develop in-demand workplace skills, deepen your insight into industry and grow your network of contacts, all of which could help you get ahead in your career after graduation. 

Throughout this year, you’ll develop a portfolio of work that includes critical self-reflection on what has been learned from the experience. You’ll be required to evidence your experiences, the skills you’ve learned and your professional growth. 

In your final year, you’ll select (or write) a variety of projects that continue to test and challenge your emerging areas of interest, culminating in a final portfolio of design work. These projects will allow you to build on core skills and reflect critically on your individual strengths – while still exploring alternative models of practice that help define a design future beyond your degree. They will also turn your thinking into highly ‘graphic’ outcomes, utilising the best technologies for each idea and celebrating your skills as an all-round practitioner. 

You’ll begin the year with a variety of workshops that encourage you to consolidate your practice, explore possible design futures, take on a leadership role as a collaborator, and finally culminate your studies – defining what you believe ‘Design is…! 

Modules

Design as

This module is designed to kickstart your final year of study with more experimental and critical approaches to your work. Projects are run at different levels and speeds to help you re-orientate and confirm your interests and skills. Beyond the opening weeks of set projects, you are then encouraged to develop self-initiated design projects that probe the boundaries of the subject. These cover the spectrum of applied design (working for a ‘client’) or authorial design (working for yourself) and begin to shape what design means to you. 

Design works

Here, you'll consider the context of design beyond university, exploring future ways of working that are framed around more traditional, fictional and/or experimental forms of studio practice. Across the module, you’ll work individually or collaboratively on a range of client, competition, or research orientated briefs, building a body of knowledge that will prepare you for innovative, future-facing studio experiences. 

Design is!

On this module, you’ll realise your own perspective of what Design Is…! – bringing together insights and ideas developed from across the course. This is demonstrated through a rich body of work closely linked to your interests and ambitions. Projects can be developed from previous thinking or through new emerging areas of focus – all of which underpin and support your future aspirations. 

Design with

This module provides a definitive platform for research-led studio projects. Here, you will help lead and support a variety of initiatives, working collaboratively with students across year groups (years 1 & 2), staff, and external partners. Mirroring the other ‘Design with’ projects already undertaken earlier in the course, you’ll lead on adaptive responses to critical themes in any given year – moulding and driving debate at the forefront of the discipline. 

Why study an Integrated Foundation Year route? 

If you’re taking on a new subject that you haven’t studied in depth before, have been out of education for a while or have a non-standard educational background then an Integrated Foundation Year degree may be the right choice for you. It is a four-year degree with an Integrated Foundation Year to start, which allows you to explore the primary elements of your subject before progressing on to the remaining three years of the BA(Hons) degree. 

What you'll study in your Foundation year

If you choose this pathway, you'll study five core modules in your Foundation year. These are all designed to help you explore the foundational elements of your subject. You'll gain relevant technical skills, learn to experiment and take risks, develop an understanding of professional practice, have opportunities to work across disciplines and collaborate with other students on live project briefs. 

Modules

Explore

You'll begin your foundation year by working collaboratively with others to explore themes of the future. You'll take risks, experiment through play and be supported to break through barriers.

Technique

You'll take subject-specific workshops and develop essential technical and practical skills in your area of study. You'll also enhance your analytical and organisational abilities.

Apply

You'll work with your peer group to think beyond discipline by addressing a societal or global issue. You'll then showcase your work to your peers and deliver and accompanying evaluation of your process.

Industry

You'll enhance your creative and practical skills in your subject specialism by responding to typical industry briefs, underpinned by focused research and experiments. You'll also gain industry insights through guest lectures and workshops.

Launch

You'll develop your unique identity in your specialism through the production of a self-initiated body of work. Your final project will be the bridge to your next year, fully supported by evaluative reviews and critical analysis of the work you have created.

After the Foundation year, you progress into Year One of the full three-year degree, equipped with a deeper knowledge of your subject, a clear understanding of your strengths, and develop a practical and technical skillset and the confidence to excel in your chosen subject. 

If you apply for and enrol onto a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year, you’ll have the option to switch onto a five-year version including a placement year. That means you’ll complete the first three years of your course before completing a placement in industry in your fourth year and returning to Falmouth for the fifth year of your programme. 

Your learning and teaching experience will be centred around dedicated studios. There are also shared spaces, including seminar rooms, lecture theatres and workshops, where you’ll receive inductions in the various and wide-ranging skills that a professional graphic designer is expected to use today. 

Alongside being taught by full time staff who have a wide range of industry and academic experience, we also have visiting lecturers from across the UK and around the world. These provocateurs introduce a variety of professional practice insights, that will inspire you and help you prepare you for the start of your career. 

In terms of your studies, we reflect an approach largely based on strong studio practice methods all designers use. This includes getting you to talk about your ideas and present to a variety of audiences and in different informal and formal situations. These can include one-to-one tutorials, seminars, lectures and supervised time in the studio. 

We’ll also have specialist inductions, IT skills training and masterclasses that are typically held when we welcome visiting lecturers. 

There is also an emphasis on you to manage and develop your work and time, so you gain the appropriate motivation to drive your own academic and career aspirations. You can rely on staff to direct you through regularly weekly briefing sessions and manage our digital learning space where all your learning materials and lectures will be archived each week. 

100% of your assessment will be coursework. 

Assessment methods:

• Opportunities for ongoing feedback & review happen weekly (normally every 2–3 days), with both staff and other students. 
• The work you submit is normally ‘graphic’ (i.e. visual in nature) but also will include some written and physical elements. 
• Sketchbook & development work is as valuable as the traditional ‘outcome’. 
• Your work is assessed in response to a variety of design briefs & workshops. 
• It is assessed against a ‘design orientated’ criteria shaped by the course team and informed by the best of industry practice. 
• Formal assessment occurs after each module (normally twice yearly). 
• In year three, you’ll exhibit your work for assessment as part of a final-year show.