Graphic Design MA

Discover how visual communication can be a powerful force for change. Enrich and advance your skills in graphic design research, process, and practice, and learn how to use them to change people’s lives for the better.

Can graphic design make a real difference to people’s lives? Our MA Graphic Design is unique in evolving your design practice while exploring and developing your role as a creative designer who wants to effect social change.

This could include issues such as behavioural and perspectival change, community cohesion, integration and diversity, and environmental challenges.

Whatever your background, you will advance your visual practice in the key areas of design, including research, textuality, materiality, concept development, visual communication, and typo/graphic innovation – leading to a more individualised, more coherent, and more competitive professional portfolio.

You'll augment this with more advanced knowledge of the complexities of socio-environmental problems, gaining insight into institutional and government structures, learning how to collaborate effectively, and rethinking how creative project development and management can play a central role in society.

This will enable you to gain the confidence to progress your career as a graphic designer, and take an active creative role in social and environmental change-making processes.

As a postgraduate student at ARU, you’ll have access to a dedicated base studio, along with specialist studios including film, photography, and printmaking. You'll also be able to make use of (and receive training in) all our other creative resources and facilities, including mono, screen, risograph, letterpress, and photographic printing.

Studying in our dedicated studios at Cambridge School of Art and at project locations, much of your work will be practice-based. You will take part in live projects, work with an external partner and students from related Masters degrees, as well as proposing and undertaking your own self-directed projects.

Throughout the course you will collaborate and discuss your work with staff, external partners, visiting professionals, and fellow students, giving you an invaluable opportunity to see how others respond to it. All our teaching team are practising designers, design researchers, and artists, so you will hear about the latest news and issues in the industry, as well as getting access to sound careers advice.

At the end of the course you will use the skills you’ve developed to propose, research, and complete a final visual project relating to your own interests within your specialism.

You'll be joining a graphic design course that attracts students from all over the world. You’ll also have access to language support, an International Merit Scholarship, and student offers including a discount on Adobe CC.

Teaching times 2023-4 (subject to change for 2024-5): Full-time - Mondays and Wednesdays 10am-4pm. Part-time - Wednesdays 10am-4pm.

Careers

Our Masters course will equip you for a career as a freelance graphic designer (editorial, publishing, packaging, UX and UI design, advertising, self-initiated projects), as well as creative roles in areas of graphic design, advertising, branding, design consultancy, media and communication, PR and publishing; and design and consultancy roles in project teams focused on sustainability and socio-environmental development and change implementation in institutes, organisations, governments and companies.

You could also find work as a designer in areas such as type design; typography; sign writing; promotion; book and magazine design; gallery artist or curator; illustrator; animator; motion graphics; UX, UI and experience design; design/gallery technician; web designer; online content provider; and visual creative and director in areas like interactive storytelling, vlogging, image mapping, interactive books, data-visualisation, design for games, or networked and automated storytelling.