Master of Arts in Graphic Design with Professional Placement

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

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 programme 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.

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 aim of the User Experience Design MSc course is to equip you with the behavioural theory, design practice and technology know-how that is necessary for a career as interaction designer, usability engineer, user researcher, or head of user experience. It focuses upon the analysis, design, prototyping and evaluation of multimedia, multi-modal, and multi-platform user interfaces that are easy to use and support a great user experience.

Each taught module guides students through a UX project – to optimise an interaction, to innovate a digital lifestyle, to create a persuasive product, and to collaborate on the development of virtual reality. Each project provides opportunities to analyse, design, prototype and evaluate cutting-edge technologies, follow industry trends and apply contemporary theories. A final "capstone" project completes the student's portfolio.

This course was developed in consultation with our industry panel, which includes Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, DreamWorks and Samsung Design Europe. Kingston University is an active member of TIGA, the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) and supports the User Experience Professionals' Association (UXPA UK).

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.

This course, one of a suite of digital media courses, enables you to study professional digital media practice in a microstudio environment with a focus on the design skills necessary for the field of games development. Through a student-centred, project-based curriculum, you will work as a games designer to develop your specialist skills while working as part of an interdisciplinary team with students from across the full programme.

• This course has been developed in consultation with our industry panel, and we are an educational partner of Sony Interactive Entertainment through PlayStation First. We are also an active member of TIGA, the games industry's representative body.
• This course has been designed to utilise the best digital media expertise and resources from across the University, and will prepare you for employment in the digital media industry, where teams of specialists work together to develop and author innovative digital media projects.

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).

We have been ranked in the top 25 Fashion Schools in the World, and one of only three in the UK, by Fashionista, the influential and trusted source of fashion news. View the 2019 rankings.

Our Fashion BA (Hons) degree is ranked no. 1 in London for Fashion in The Guardian University Guide league table 2020 and was one of  a handful of worldwide institutions to have been awarded four badges of excellence by the Business of Fashion (for Best Overall, Best in Global Influence, Best in Learning Experience and Best in Long-term Value).

The course focuses on evolution and radical change in design. You will explore how design is influenced by cultural, social, critical and historical studies.

You will develop your own signature style, experimenting across sketch work, 2D to 3D, knitwear and digital print in Kingston School of Art's workshops and dedicated fashion design studios. You will also have access to our working dress archive which includes pieces from 1750 to the present day, including the recently acquired Sibling knitwear archive. Our curator also works closely with Bath Fashion Museum.

Our strong industry links mean you will learn to apply creativity to the real-world and will be industry-ready on graduation.

This course recognises the diversity of design practice and prepares you for employment within the design industry.

You'll be given time to develop a personal design approach, learn new skills and apply them to carefully-structured projects with industry partners, that prepare you for your preferred career direction. The course requires you to challenge yourself, your perceptions of design and your role as a designer.

Live client projects are an integrated feature of the course providing valuable industry experience; recently the course has worked with brands including MADE.com and Tefal. We additionally encourage independent external collaboration. You'll work in an enviable learning environment that includes newly-renovated studio spaces and workshops supported by attentive academic and technical staff.

Faculty-wide technical resources available to students include the 3D workshop with ceramics, big build, woodworking, metalworking, blacksmithing and bronze-casting; CNC, Laser, Zund, 3D print, state-of-the-art filming environment and animation suite; industry standard photographic suite with two new digital darkrooms; newly-specified digital media workshops with hardware and software upgraded to a professional level.

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 program sets out to affect systemic change in the fashion industry by offering alternatives to the mainstream fashion system. It focuses on developing a deep understanding of the multi-dimensionality of sustainability as it relates to fashion. Sustainable solutions are embedded in all coursework, using fashion as a medium to affect social change, resulting in innovative and ethical solutions, transformational systems, and organisations.

Based on critical thinking and problem solving, the program offers the opportunity to plot a new future for the fashion industry that challenges existing practices with practical and inspirational alternatives. Project work adheres to the four pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, social, and cultural as an alternative to fashions unsustainable footprint.

This is a practice-based MA offering a multitude of tangible outcomes that make a positive contribution to society, culture, and ecology. Students can choose their area of focus with either a practice, business, or a systems-design outcome. The creative freedom offered by the program results in a variety of degree outputs, from websites and apps, services, new systems and models, exhibitions, installations, and product development, all based on design futuring. This is the business of design as a problem-solving tool, not a means to produce more stuff.