Master of Arts in Graphic Design with Professional Placement

at Kingston University London - Kingston School of Art, Knights Park United Kingdom

This course helps you realise your creative potential in fine art and develops skills to understand contemporary art. You will explore traditional forms of painting and sculpture with new forms such as film and digital printmaking. You will also develop visual analysis skills and historical knowledge by exploring a range of images, texts and objects.

Kingston University is an associate of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), so you'll receive free membership and access to seminars and events. Our links to industry also include the Tate, Stanley Picker Gallery, Drawing Room, Five Years and Traffic.

The course focus is on personal and professional development and you'll have the opportunity to participate in external projects and competitions. You'll also have the chance to exhibit your work at our on-site gallery, and other London locations.

The Photography MA at Kingston School of Art is highly bespoke course designed to support you as an artist working with the photographic as an expanded and interdisciplinary practice through practice-led research.

With an emphasis on critical thinking and socially engaged practices it offers transferable skills in the production and post-production of images through the communication and development of ideas

You will develop a major body of practical work for exhibition and publication over the 17-month course in a supportive and dynamic environment culminating in a final show at Kingston School of Art.

The course encourages a rich interdisciplinary approach that crosses the boundaries between different forms, disciplines and subject matters that engage with the expanded definition of the photographic medium (analogue and digital, new media and technology, still and moving image, installation; performance and the archive).

This collaborative degree, between Kingston School of Art and the Design Museum, has grown into one of the world's foremost programmes for design curators.

Taught by leading curators and designers, the course engages critically and creatively with our fast-changing, complex world. You will have the opportunity to curate live projects and build your own professional profile, through the Design Museum and with institutions such as the Architectural Association, British Council, Gallery Fumi and the Royal Academy of Arts. Led by both research and practice, this course has taught aspiring curators for more than fifteen years.

The Kingston School of Art environment, which includes the Stanley Picker Gallery, Dorich House Museum and outstanding workshop facilities, encourages creativity and experimentation as responses to interrogations of contemporary conditions. To actively consider geopolitical, social and economic concerns, Curating Contemporary Design is taught within a transdisciplinary framework that allows students to develop responses to the complexity of the world today.

Kingston School of Art offers a stimulating environment for the postgraduate study of Illustration. Kingston University has some of the best fabrication and visual process workshops in the UK. This enables the most exciting innovations in ‘thinking through making'.

The Communication Design: Illustration MA course, offered through the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation, aims to develop creative professional understanding of Illustration in the context of communication design.

The course is structured to challenge you and your preconceptions about both illustration and design. It places an emphasis on the patterns of research you develop and the visual methods you employ to explore and unravel briefs. You will be expected to demonstrate how you research and develop your ideas. In this context, research is not only a working process it can also be considered an outcome in its own right.

This program asks you to examine: what, how, why and who as key factors in design thinking. This represents a shift from the traditional definition of design and illustration as a problem solving activity to a placing the focus on problem finding. The course encourages the exploration and understanding of the methods and processes at work in contemporary illustration.

This course has been designed to enhance your long-term employment possibilities through an appreciation of the changing global, technological and social context of illustration and design. It includes the option of a one-year UK work placement, enhancing your experience and connections in industry. This type of assessed placement is not available on any other postgraduate courses.

The Computer Animation postgraduate degree equips you with the creative skills and technical knowledge needed for jobs in the CGI, games, and VFX industries.

With an emphasis on industry-relevant workflows, our project-based curriculum is designed to teach you specialist skillsets in the 3D production pipeline. Underpinned by core concepts and visual narrative, these specialisms include:

• 3D character animation
• Organic and hard-surface modelling
• Digital sculpting
• Shading and texturing
• Lighting and rendering
• Compositing
• Character rigging

Throughout the course you will build a showreel for your professional portfolio. It is one of a suite of digital media courses that immerses students in a studio environment to work as part of an interdisciplinary team from across the full programme.

Equally importantly, our assessments and tutor feedback will help you develop the following employability skills:

• Analysis, observation, and self-critique
• Communication of concepts and techniques
• Project-planning and time-management
• Research and problem-solving
• Interpretation and implementation of feedback
• Teamwork and collaboration.

If you are interested in developing a career in the business of art, this masters level course will prepare you for the opportunities lying ahead. You will develop the key skills and gain the knowledge to understand global art markets within ever-changing artistic, cultural and economic environments.

Making the most of its location in Europe's art market capital in London, this Art Business MA degree draws on a high standard of interdisciplinary academic and practical teaching by recognised scholars. It also offers insights from art market professionals, both those with long-standing careers and those who are rising entrepreneurs of the millennial generation. In short, the curriculum balances skills training with academic rigor, as well as core business and legal concepts with industry-specific knowledge in order to reflect the diverse professional landscape students might wish to enter. Students benefit from frequent field trips to art business enterprises and partnership projects with industry.

This course prepares you for a career in exhibitions and events in the creative industries. You will develop practical and analytical skills for the curation, conception, resourcing, marketing and budgeting of an exhibition or event.

You will learn to visualise, collaborate, experiment and project manage as you work on real-world projects with other students and industry professionals. You will also develop your knowledge of the creative industries, exploring topics such as design thinking, branding and strategy for creative organisations. You will have creative freedom and be encouraged to undertake non-commercial creative projects.

The course also offers opportunities to work on live projects with creative companies and institutions, as well as alongside your classmates in our student-powered creative agency, Studio KT1.

Throughout the course you'll also develop the commercial and organisational skills and understanding needed to work effectively in the Creative and Cultural sector.

This course will prepare you for creative roles in landscape and urbanism design practice and research. Kingston's London location, its local and European networks and its international perspective provide the focus for contemporary landscape and urbanism projects. These include green and water infrastructures, resilient and adaptive city strategies and the detailed design of places for people.

The Fashion MA at Kingston University is a unique and innovative course combining the creative thinking of the Design School core beliefs with a very solid and 'creative' fashion industry focus.

With a heritage and specialism in womenswear, menswear, knitwear, digital or fashion artefact outcomes, the course combines industry standards with a creative and contemporary approach to fashion design developing a holistic and exciting approach to fashion design and beyond.

Our broad design community and positioning as a progressive and highly-rated design institution means that Fashion can actively collaborate and share ideas with others across the Design School.

The Illustration Animation BA(Hons) - the UK's first degree in Illustration Animation - at Kingston School of Art combines narrative and time-based subjects to give the undergraduate complete creative freedom to engage in visual thinking, expression and communication.

The course is part of the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation and Kingston University is ranked No. 1 in the UK for design and crafts* in the Guardian League Tables 2021 (*covers graphic design, interior design, illustration, animation and product and furniture design.)

Illustration has expanded from the traditional printed page to explore many forms of visual media including digital objects and interaction, spaces and environments. Animation as a time-based medium allows exploration from traditional to hybrid domains like film and television, and virtual and augmented reality.

We celebrate the cross-pollination of ideas and skills through the hybrid nature of the course. You'll benefit from dedicated studio spaces and the opportunity for collaboration between illustration and animation.

Built around drawing, the course is carefully structured to develop your individual voice, applying content to image communication to reach an audience.

We encourage learning through making and you will have access to all workshops to test and prototype using any process from etching to ceramics, arc welding to laser cutting, and 3D printing or large-scale textile printing.

The course includes self-initiated and group work assignments and presentations encouraged through self-reflective and critical discourse, individual practice is built and tested by peer group interaction. This breadth ensures students develop the range of skills essential to contemporary practice in all forms of applied image making.

Projects with industry, cultural and social institutions test and shape student understanding in real-world situations. Staff practitioners and alumni networks offer insight and contacts with international creative practice, including studio visits and placements.

The course has an excellent reputation for nurturing graduates who go on to be leading practitioners in illustration and animation, as well as design, direction and a broad range of creative careers.