Graphic Design

The preliminary and intensive Integrated Foundation in Art and Design is designed to develop your ideas, skills and confidence in readiness for progressing to year one of your degree programme.

This year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your Professional Placement Year, you'll work to secure your placement, constructing a development plan with your module leader and your placement coordinator from our Careers and Employability team.

On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement, for assessment.

We teach you the critical, technical and aesthetic skills necessary to become a professional graphic designer: designer, typographer, illustrator, or image­maker. You’ll discover the varied and complex nature of design practice.

Our aim is that you’ll graduate as a strategic thinker, innovator and maker, having produced creative and challenging outcomes across a range of media or within your chosen specialist area.

Year one
You’ll study carefully-structured studio modules examining the core aspects of graphic design, typography and image. You’ll learn to conceptualise, produce, and critique type and images. Attending specialist workshops will help you develop practical skills.

Workshops include: drawing, screen­printing, letterpress, etching and lithography, photography (analogue and digital), motion graphics, and animation (analogue and digital). You’ll gain an awareness of the industry through a Professional Contexts module, and a contextual framework through a Historical and Critical Studies module.

Year two
You’ll explore interactive media in the context of type and image. You can choose to focus on graphic design, illustration or interactive media, or keep an interdisciplinary approach. A Professional Development module will help you consider and develop your professional identity as a practitioner and your Historical and Contextual Studies module will prepare you for your dissertation.

Year three
You’ll produce a series of portfolio projects. Live briefs will give you experience of dealing with clients, real production problems, and solutions. Portfolio clinics conducted by professional designers help you consider and prepare your portfolio before graduation, and career workshops help you get ready for career networking, opportunity finding or further study.

You’ll be assessed in two ways. Firstly, during your studio modules there will be critiques, advice and commentary from your tutor or peers about your work (formative assessment). Secondly, after you present your research and you final design outcomes, you’ll receive written feedback with a mark from your tutor (summative feedback).

You’ll learn through a variety of methods including directed technical workshops, lectures, small group seminars, and, most frequently, through the practice of making in specialist tutor-led studio sessions. Working in studio-sized groups with a dedicated specialist tutor, you’ll develop typography, image making and illustration skills. By responding to set design problems and participating in the frequent studio critiques with tutors and peers, you’ll develop strong critical and reflective abilities.

Self-directed learning is facilitated through materials on Ultra – Bath Spa University’s Virtual Learning Environment – and other web-based resources. You’ll also have access to our specialist art and design library.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

As part of your degree, you could study abroad on a placement at one of Bath Spa’s partner universities.

We offer an international study trip to first and second-year students. Past destinations have included New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Cuba, Iceland, Amsterdam, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Morocco, and Beijing. You’ll have a chance to meet and talk with internationally acclaimed designers, illustrators, design writers and curators in their studios.

There are also visits to museums and galleries. Additionally, each year will have a study day-trip, typically to London, to review key exhibitions.

We have good industry links. These include a final year personal portfolio review session, where you’ll benefit from real industry advice on your portfolio and presentation techniques from established practising designers and illustrators.

Our graduates become graphic designers, art directors, illustrators, animators, and interactive media designers. They work across the full range of the creative media industry including advertising, motion graphics, photography, and digital and print publishing.

We encourage our students to participate in design competitions and our third year students must develop one competition brief as part of a final year portfolio. Past students have had success with D&AD New Blood as well as other national competitions.

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

The Professional Placement Year (PPY) provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your PPY, you'll work to identify roles of interest and secure a placement. The Placements Team will support through timetabled sessions and 1:1 appointments.

As well as completing a minimum of 900 placement hours, you will complete two assessments demonstrating your skill development, growth in professional behaviours and how the PPY has impacted your future career aspirations.

As a BA Graphic Design student, you’ll benefit from access to comprehensive digital workshops and specialist art and design facilities, including:

• Our student service point at Locksbrook where you can purchase subsidised art and design materials, hire out equipment for free and collect Library resources
• Access to our well-stocked Library at Newton Park
• Specialist technical workshops across all of art and design
• Access to studio space where you can work on projects and refine your practice

You’ll have access to a range of resources, designed to ease workflow and facilitate creative and experimental practice. This includes access to both traditional analogue and cutting-edge digital technology. Our studios feature new Mac computers connected to digital printing. Large format colour printing is available in the adjacent technical workshop.