Illustration degree - MA

Program Overview

This postgraduate Illustration program focuses on professional development and research, equipping students with practical skills and a strong professional context. Students work in a collaborative environment, benefit from expert support, and develop portfolios showcasing their advanced knowledge and understanding of illustration practices. The program prepares graduates for careers in diverse fields such as book illustration, graphic design, and multimedia art.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

This is a practical postgraduate course in Illustration, grounded in professional development and research. You’ll produce illustration projects in a collaborative and creative environment, working with and alongside students of Visual Communication, Photography, and other Design and Fine Art specialisms.

Outline:

• Course Structure: This Design Master’s runs over one year and is divided into three trimesters.
• Trimester One: Encourages playfulness and risk-taking, asking students to respond to a range of instructions in ways that will allow them to interrogate how they work.
Students begin to gather primary and secondary research that will feed into their assessments. Key issues in design and communication practice are introduced, and students explore how their specialist approach relates to the wider field. Students also begin to develop their professional practice skills such as marketing, social media, IT, collaborative working and exhibition installation.
• Trimester Two: Maintaining an experimental approach, students begin to narrow their focus.
Academic staff help students evaluate their development and refine their work to support the project outcome. Students are encouraged to pay greater attention to the way in which their project functions and engages its audience. Technical staff support students to bring their project to a level appropriate for the assessment submission.
• Trimester Three: A self-directed, double practice module leads to the final Degree Show.
Students establish a line of enquiry, working to a proposal of their devising, which positions their work within their specialist discipline. Students work in the studio with increasing independence to produce a body of work that demonstrates their now advanced knowledge and understanding of their professional practice.
• Course Modules: This course includes or offers the following modules.
• Research Methods
• Theory and Professional Context
• Practice 1 (Design)
• Research Practice
• Theory and Professional Practices
• Practice 2 (Design)
• Master's Project

Assessment:

Your progress is evaluated by formative assessment (throughout the duration of the course) and summative assessment (at the end of each trimester), through a mixture of exhibitions, verbal/visual presentations, research folders/blogs and written assignments.

Teaching:

You’ll learn through lectures, talks, taught sessions, individual and group tutorials, and studio critiques and seminars. Visiting lecturers, and seminars with external professionals and internationally renowned designers and artists, will help you determine where your current practice sits within the industry. Your learning is also supported by specialist librarians.

Careers:

Careers opportunities encompass skills such as book illustration, graphic and digital design, research and teaching, and roles include:

• Illustrator
• Graphic Designer
• Art Director
• Multimedia Artist
• Animator
• Set and Exhibit Designer

Other:

• Fieldwork: When permitted, Bath School of Art, Film and Media offers fieldwork opportunities throughout the academic year.
• Adobe Creative Campus: One of only three Adobe Creative Campuses in the UK, Bath Spa provides all students with access to the full Adobe Creative Suite, giving them the tools to communicate creatively, whatever their course or chosen professional field.
• Specialist technical workshops across all of art and design
• Access to studio space where students can work on projects and refine their practice
• Locksbrook Campus: Locksbrook Campus is a Grade II listed building designed by Nicholas Grimshaw in 1976.
It has now been transformed into an innovative, open plan space, redesigned to meet 21st century environmental standards, with technical workshops surrounded by flexible studio spaces and large social areas. Locksbrook has received both a RIBA South West Award 2021 and RIBA National Award 2021, recognizing and celebrating what an amazingly inspirational space it is to come together to design, make, do, create and learn in.

• UK full time £9,520
• UK part time £4,760
• International full time £17,760