Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Fashion Branding with Communication

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

Our BA (Hons) Fine Art course immerses you in a diverse, creative community where you are encouraged to learn the business of becoming an artist in the contemporary world.

This engaging course is housed within specialist studio communities, each led by experienced teams of artists. You will engage with a range of strategies to support the development of your studio practice with an emphasis on craft, skill and critical thought.

You will be supported to produce work that spans a diverse range of media. You will embrace appropriate forms of resolution such as painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, performance, screenings, text or sound works.

On joining the course you will embark on an initial period of orientation, induction and familiarisation which draws from our long history of traditional art education. You will then work in one of the specialist communities where there will be regular critiques, seminars and material workshops involving students from different levels of the course.

We engage with cultural visits to galleries and exhibitions, and you can take inspiration from nearby Leeds Art Gallery, the Henry Moore Institute as well as the award-winning Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

You will be encouraged to seek opportunities to exhibit your work, gaining valuable experience and practical skills that will help to prepare you for a range of rewarding careers in this exciting discipline.

Our studios are creative spaces with an innovative and engaging atmosphere. You will benefit from exposure to the structures and disciplines of a studio environment, learning how individual and collaborative creativity combine to produce work.

This course will encourage you to develop your own voice, opinions and individual understanding of graphic design. You will build the discipline and skills you need to succeed in a professional environment, such as peer presentations, group feedback sessions and collaborative projects. You will explore how the application of type and image can solve problems and communicate ideas, which will engage and challenge your audience.

The BA (Hons) Graphic Design course offers opportunities to collaborate with creatives from other disciplines with different skills to your own. Developing your creative understanding you will be able to communicate both visually and verbally. You will gain a wider understanding of the creative, social and ethical context of contemporary visual culture. You will seek problems to solve and audiences to connect with.

Our industry links are extensive, with an array of visiting professionals delivering lectures, seminars and workshops, and setting live briefs.

Our MA Illustration course encourages students to question and expand the nature of their practice, the modes of dissemination and the context in which they situate themselves.

Drawing from multidisciplinary methods of working, students will be confident to explore and extend the concepts of communication, narrative and situated illustration through research, practice and discursive critique.

The course will allow students a stimulating, open thinking space for speculation, collaboration and exploration of the boundaries of what the discipline can be. The course recognises the power of illustration as a tool for looking closely, seeing and communicating in a way that is resistant to trend or restraints of process or medium. The course situates students at the forefront of the illustration research discipline, with authorial and innovative practice at the centre.

The course is supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests from the fields of illustration and its broader visual cultures. Research and dissemination methods will be introduced and developed with the support of visiting industry professionals, workshops, lectures and seminars with opportunity to situate work in relevant professional contexts – publishing, heritage, exhibitions, conferences and events. The course methodology centres around the ideas of observing, questioning and responding to the world, seeking out ideas and examining how these are communicated.

Our MA Creative Practice has been devised for creative practitioners, recent graduates and professionals who wish to examine, strengthen and deepen their practice within their own context.

This course offers a bespoke learning experience that is tailored to each student’s practice: a wide range of creative practitioners have all studied on this course.

The course encourages you to pursue an individual research interest for the duration of study which will allow you to examine and strengthen your own practice and place it at the centre of your studies. It addresses the needs of graduates who want to continue to develop their practice and identities in the context of the creative and cultural industries.

Students will maintain contact with other creative practitioners and develop freelance or other career paths in the context of a portfolio career. This course will also prepare those who wish to develop ideas for application to a practice-based PhD.

This dynamic course will encourage you to take a creative approach to fashion branding with communication, and develop an individual practice that is underpinned by a social, cultural, political and ethical awareness of this global industry.

You will explore a diverse range of evolving theories and practices that underpin fashion branding, and have opportunities to develop skills in: creative direction and styling, image making, editorial copy, advertising, exhibition design and styling, fashion films, visual merchandising and experiential campaigns.

With new technologies increasingly influencing the industry, you’ll study futurology and investigate theories to apply to augmented and virtual reality, mobile technology user interface design, and digital and social media platform communications that will turn such future-facing ideas into reality.

There will be opportunities to work collaboratively with students on other courses. You will have contact with industry through opportunities such as visiting speakers, live projects, industry briefs and competitions to ensure that you develop professional skills.

Our BA (Hons) Fashion Design is a three year, full time, practice-based course that embraces the diversity of fashion in the 21st century.

In close alignment with the fashion industry we offer inspirational visiting speakers, live projects and competitions, industry visits, and invitations to fashion events, all of which authenticate the currency of our course and its ability to produce ‘industry-ready’ graduates. Our dedicated teaching team support the development of practice-based skills, professional attitudes and intellectual abilities which are necessary to succeed as a professional fashion practitioner.

During your studies, gallery and residential visits where possible will offer a cultural insight into the fashion ecology and inspire your work. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual. You will also explore the context of historical and contemporary fashion and the wider factors that influence fashion design thinking including gender, sustainable practice and ethics, enabling you to become an informed fashion design thinker whilst recognising your identity as a creative fashion design practitioner.

Our established relationships with the fashion industry offer you the opportunity to enhance your portfolio and increase your awareness of the professional expectations of potential employers. Working with partners, that have included the British Fashion Council’s ‘Colleges Council’ and Graduate Fashion Week, we offer opportunities to enter high profile competitions, attend seminars/presentations and showcase your work on a variety of platforms.

Our MA Graphic Design explores the fascinating relationship between design-led practice, industry engagement and critical analysis.

You will build a body of self directed work informed by contemporary graphic design practice and emerging debates within the field of design. Driven by problem analysis, critical debate and design innovation you will develop briefs, engage with an audience and work collaboratively. Your investigation will explore the relationship between visual and contextual research, investigating the social, political and ethical contexts of your work.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within graphic design and visual culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will source briefs, work with clients and apply your contextual and industry informed knowledge and understanding to question why graphic design needs to exist and who is the audience - the focus is on becoming a problem seeker not just a problem solver.

Our MA in Digital Fashion offers a unique route for creatives interested in the digital future of fashion. It will enable through practice-led research and new sustainable methods of design and fabrication to reach a new frontier of fashion design.

Fashion is a dynamic field with trends currently pointing to significant innovations in digital design and production to facilitate the creation of multiple digital and physical products from both fashionable and functional briefs. The emergence of additive manufacturing as a new method for manufacturing, along with the increasing acceptance of smart and wearable tech, will allow students with technical abilities and/or understanding of traditional fashion design and pattern cutting skills to push their ideas into new terrain.

Students will use 3D programs, such as CLO 3D, which allows an intuitive method of design, as well as scanners and laser cutters in innovative ways throughout the modules. Graduates enjoy a wide range of employment prospects due to their transferable skills and most relevant digital skills for today’s modern fashion industry. The course supports individuals’ career aspirations and students can tailor their work towards their aim.

This exciting and creative course nurtures individuality through collaboration. It is designed to produce ‘Ideas That Work’ from creative professionals in advertising.

We’ve developed exceptional links with leading national and international agencies such as McCann, Ogilvy, BJL, Havas Linx, Atomic London, Intermarketing, Golley Slater, Jaywing, CreativeRace, Home, Uniform and TBWA, which will maximise your exposure to industry practice.

Creativity sits at the core of our proposition and we encourage originality and innovative thinking. Our ‘Actively Creative’ philosophy helps you to experience first hand creative challenges which are developed both in-house and through our industry contacts.

Our tutors have considerable industry experience spanning art direction, copywriting and branding. They will support you to understand and analyse advertising, so that you can use what you discover to inform and develop your own work.

You’ll have the opportunity to enter prestigious international competitions which have included D&AD New Blood Awards, YCN, The Drum Chip Shop Awards, and AdVenture in past years. Top agencies have offered coaching, mentoring, work critiques, live briefs, workshops, competition briefs and work experience possibilities. Our students regularly win work experience opportunities with agencies.

Our BA (Hons) Animation is a focussed course aimed at students interested in becoming a professional animator who can work across animated film, TV and related industries. You will work alongside other students who are collectively interested in animation production.

On this course students will learn practical and technical skills across a range of traditional and digital animation practice. A grounding in animation and related concepts and theories will help you make an informed choice when you begin to specialise on a specific area of animation practice. This is developed through practical investigation of the animation production cycle including narrative development, worldbuilding, character design, storyboarding, background/layout and animating using a variety of media and techniques.

We encourage collaboration both at course level and across the University, including live briefs and international competitions, helping you to focus on developing your specialist practice within animation.

Work experience and studio visits are supported as part of the professional practice elements of the course. Visiting professionals will give an insight into career development and industry practices.

Previous visiting professionals have included animators, modelmakers, sound designers, scriptwriters, producers and directors from companies such as CBBC, Aardman Animation, Mackinnon and Saunders, Cartoon Network and Golden Wolf. The course encourages students to attend festivals and conferences as opportunities arise. Through these you’ll learn to generate your own networking, collaboration and career opportunities, and how to find work and clients when you graduate.