Master of Arts in Design and Innovation

at Arts University Bournemouth United Kingdom

On this course you’ll learn practical, professional and entrepreneurial skills that equip you to work as part of a team, or even set up your own business in textiles.

You’ll study textiles in its widest sense and learn many skills, from print, stitch embellishment to dyeing and mixed media construction. You’ll have the opportunity to focus on a variety of specialist areas, including textiles for fashion, textiles for interiors and textiles as design/crafts.

Traditional skills are taught together with expertise in modern design development, production, and contemporary invention. Whether you go on to work for a retail brand, or an international design house, we will prepare you for the challenges that the creative textile industry holds.

We've also formed an AUB textiles Agency to promote student work at Premier Vision Paris and London Print Textile Trade Fairs. Students have engaged with industry – experiencing how the business buys and sells textiles.

You’ll graduate with both a breadth of understanding and context with a specialist focus and application in design. The design course builds on the established expertise within the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, becoming a collaborative design link between disciplines just as in industry.

The design thinking, strategy and 2D communication aspects of the course link well with the Graphics and Visual Communications courses at AUB, reflecting current industry practice where the definition of the product is wider than a singular object. The 3D design, prototyping and realisation aspects complement the Modelmaking, Interiors, Architecture and Fashion courses.

Topics like design strategy, user-centred design and the commercialisation process familiar to Product Design could also be a design focus that feeds back out to other programmes through a collaborative curriculum, breaking conventional subject boundaries no longer recognised by the industry. As the course progresses through each level, you'll specialise the direction of your design focus, allowing you to join with existing units on other AUB courses.

Design problems will be addressed through applying a process of systematically interrogating design practice; using design methods to analyse and comprehend situations and behaviour and generating alternative and novel, even experimental solutions. Research is the fundamental driver for creative thinking and innovation to be developed through a specific individual and critical approach to reflective enquiry and practice.

Closely aligned with the AUB Innovation Studio and supported by partners in the design industry, live projects and business and entrepreneurship will be an integral element of your study.

This two-year, studio-based course, is the second part of the three-part qualification in becoming an architect. This design-based professional qualification, accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Architects Registration Board (ARB).

You’ll work alongside fellow makers, collaborators, and enablers who have come from different schools around the world; you’ll have the opportunity to collaborate across the arts. The course philosophy has many connections and develops on from the four key issues identified in the BA (Hons) Architecture (ARB/RIBA part 1).

This course takes its approach from the context of the ‘shared studio-based arts university’ where all courses are making. This philosophy is applied throughout the taught units by emphasising the role of drawing, models and texts in the making of architecture; the things we make – to think about the things we make.

As a student you’ll be asked to develop projects with strong narratives commenting on current social, cultural and environmental issues. In each unit you’re encouraged to give architectural expression to your own personal views and visions, whilst aiming to produce tangible propositions, mindful of how they might be realised.

Studio Culture

The studio is both professional and exploratory. This educational experience is grounded in a strong studio culture of making and thinking, supported by regular lectures by practitioners, seminars and reviews.

The studio generates an atmosphere in which open, critical and reflective practice supports exploration and risk-taking where we test, discuss and present ideas. We’re particularly focused in delivering studio-based and student-centred learning environment.

We offer shared facilities such as the workshop, fab-labs, the print room and the Drawing Studio.

Personal, Professional and Ecological Development

The course will support your personal development towards a creative contribution to architecture and the wider world after graduation. The final Thesis Design year gives you the opportunity to develop your own research design project that integrates making and collaboration through an ecological narrative.

Visual Communication combines skills in illustration, graphic design, typography and digital design to create images that persuade or inform.

From the start, the course focuses on hand-drawn imagery to develop a feel for the shapes and styles that connect with audiences. Practical experiences will be used to develop your skills. We’ll help you to build your visual awareness and understanding of the world around you. In addition to plenty of theory and debate, you’ll have the chance to work on live briefs with other students and find work placements in creative businesses.

Visual Communication underlines the importance of good ideas. You’ll leave with all the practical skills that you need to work in a vibrant and exciting industry. Our graduates work as freelancers in small design companies and with larger firms, both locally and internationally.

A career in creative writing could see you working in publishing, a literary agency, freelancing or in education — and that’s just the start. Whether you want to create prose, scripts, poetry or nonfiction, we’ll help you turn writing into a career.

With visits from published writers and industry professionals, you’ll be able to explore career opportunities and build contacts. When you graduate, you’ll have a strong portfolio and a professional network to kickstart your career.

Writers rarely work alone, so this course will give you the opportunity to collaborate with other courses. You might write scripts with animators or filmmakers, or explore narratives with illustrators.

This degree will help you to prepare for professional practice (part 1 ARB/RIBA) and investigate the ways we live in the world through material and spatial relationships. You'll develop skills that will form the foundation of your career in architecture: making, collaborating, designing and communicating. Integrating practice with theory is at the heart of professional architectural practice, so that’s exactly what you’ll do here.

You’ll explore, experiment and develop new solutions. Discussing and presenting your work you'll share ideas about architecture through making tangible propositions, mindful of how they might be realised.

This ‘research-by-making’ approach encourages risk-taking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Both inside and outside of the studio, as well as in regular seminars, lectures and reviews, you’ll work on projects that require a creative balance of rigour and risk, informed by your design, technical and contextual knowledge.

At every stage in your degree, you’ll have opportunities to build on your own practice through collaborations with other courses. You’ll develop an understanding of the practice and theory of architecture, grounded in making, along with critical thinking and a familiarity with the material nature of architectural ideas. You’ll explore the practice of making thoughtful, tangible, inhabited places that mediate between the individual, the world we live in, and the others we live with.

Students apply to the course predominantly from graphic design courses but are welcomed from a variety of backgrounds (if they can show an aptitude for typography). Students may have studied photography, architecture, illustration, interaction design, three-dimensional design, fine art, or, subjects such as journalism, philosophy, psychology, anthropology or sociology.

Whatever your background, you’ll be required to reflect on your worldview; the underlying assumptions and understanding that guides and constrains your practice, and to use this reflection as a starting point from which to further develop. Your practice can take many forms: it can be self-expressive, or socially orientated; print, screen-based or three-dimensional.

It can focus on an aspect of a well-defined area of design, such as branding, experimental typography, publishing, and user-centred design, or on something more unconventional defined as part of your study.

Graphic designers often work in groups, sometimes comprising members from different disciplines. MA Graphic Design provides many opportunities to work in interdisciplinary ways as it sits alongside the courses of other disciplines. Many of the taught sessions such as the introduction to research methods and processes occur in these interdisciplinary groups. At other times however you’ll be developing your project with your supervisor and other students on your course. This will require you to develop a theoretical framework, methodology and research methods that support your research focus.

As a graphic designer you should anticipate the possible consequences of your design interventions, including the meanings constructed through your practice, in relation to ethical and sustainability issues as well as to other relevant contexts. Creative approaches are required that respond to complex situations in which many problems reside. Outcomes are not constrained by media or by limited interpretations of what it is to be a graphic designer.

Consequently, an outcome might involve the design of an experience or service, as much as it might concern more conventional forms of graphic production.

MA Fine Art represents an exciting opportunity for students to challenge and build on their previous achievements and to study at an advanced level. Students deepen their knowledge and their ability to focus on their chosen field in relation to the key aspects that inform it.

Set within a community and culture of makers, students engage in dialogue and debate with their peers, both within and across MA pathways.

This experience provides dynamic and interactive sessions, which are vital to the enhancement and testing of new thinking and ideas generation as well as offering the broadest available critical arena for discussion of student work.

In our dynamic studio environments, you’ll learn to experiment, test and develop your illustration practice. You can explore drawing, painting, sewing and printmaking, as well as photographic, digital, moving image and interactive media.