Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Visual Communication

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

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 MA Animation course gives practitioners a year to create an animated film from start to finish. You will engage in a critical dialogue with practice, theory and the professional aspects of animation.

The course provides space for the animators to make work of cultural value, but understand commercial practices. The curriculum is designed to allow both individual and collaborative practice to take place. However, we positively encourage collaboration as it is a key part of the animation production process, enabling you to undertake ambitious projects.

The course will provide you with the space to develop animation, think and question what animation has the potential to be and how it communicates to an audience. You also will have the opportunity to explore emerging technologies and new approaches to storytelling such as the use of VR and game technologies.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within animation including 2D and 3D animators, modelmakers, scriptwriters and you will also engage with visiting industry professionals. The course will present you with the opportunities to work with other creatives on the course and across other MA courses within the institution. The objective is to enable students to produce engaging work across all forms of animation from animated shorts, documentary and experimental practices.

Anyone can press the button on a camera. Our BA (Hons) Photography course will encourage you to critically consider every aspect of this art form, from the composition, to the audience and post-production.

You’ll learn about the world of visual language and image making, from art direction to curating, and learn to use a wide range of traditional and digital formats and equipment.

We’re looking for students with a range of interests and an open mind, who embrace broader practices around photography, which is becoming increasingly important as photographers work across genres.

This is an outward-looking course, designed to maximise your employability or freelance success on graduation. Beside learning extensive technical skills, you’ll benefit from enterprise and business skills (including copyright and licensing), networking, mentoring, work experience opportunities and guest speakers. Collaborations with students on other courses will help you to build a diverse portfolio of experience.

Our programme of internationally renowned speakers has included Martin Parr, David Brandon Geeting, Erik Kessels, Ewen Spencer, Haley Morris-Cafiero,Sohrab Hura, Julian Germain, Anouk Kruithof, Cristina De Middel, Guy Martin, Thijs Groot Wassink (WassinkLungdren), Simon Roberts and Kevin Cummins.

In the past there have been study visits to Paris, Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai, Tokyo and New York, plus day-trips within the UK and to the Format International Photography Festival in Derby. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

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.

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) Visual Communication course offers a truly multidisciplinary environment underpinned by design methods. Students on the course create work which both, reflects their own interests, and responds to the requirements of the contemporary creative industries.

We provide an opportunity to develop a personal and professional understanding of visual communication within a range of contexts including: studio-based practice, live projects, collaborative learning and work-related learning. Through a carefully structured three-year process, students will learn to become practitioners in visual communication or further study.

Learning and teaching is based on design problem-solving methods, which draw upon the academic and industry experience of the staff team. The teaching uses ideas and terms from film, television, graphic design, photography, illustration and event design.

External engagement through work-related learning is central to our approach, with all students having the opportunity to work on live projects and many engaging regularly with businesses and external partners. Our alumni work in a variety of fields including illustration, television, photography, graphic design, film, animation, visual merchandising, and teaching. Graduate employers include industry leaders in all areas of the creative sector. In addition many alumni are now established freelance practitioners working for clients across the UK and overseas.

This course provides the framework and critical discourse for the candidate to develop, create, and publish a graphic novel over the course of study.

You will research and develop sequential narrative methods, world-building techniques, and graphic novel publishing and immersive technologies. Engaging with the breadth and depth of what a sequential narrative could be, you will critically examine and contextualise your work in relation to emerging social, political, cultural, and ethical issues. You will work individually and collaboratively to produce a graphic novel that questions the role of the comic artist, audience, distribution and immersive media.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within sequential narrative, comic art and graphic novel culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will challenge what a graphic novel can be, working collaboratively with writers, artists, publishers and readers – the aim is to create externally-engaged, progressive, inclusive, and immersive graphic novels for a diverse and growing readership.

On this course we see no boundaries between performance, production and composition. We look for creative and versatile musicians who wish to develop their performance, production and technical skills to a professional level in order to prepare for a career in the contemporary music industries.

We recruit musicians to the following principal studies: vocals, keyboard, guitar, bass guitar and drum kit. You will study in a creative environment that fosters collaborative opportunities with students across a range of disciplines. Our course nurtures and develops musicians to have the confidence to create original music. Performance, production and composition are integral to our approach whilst providing you with a clear understanding of the business of music and the structure of the music industries. Our experienced tutors and visiting industry professionals will support and stimulate the development of technical skills necessary to thrive as a working musician in the 21st century creative world. On graduation students will have the choice of a wide range of career options.

This dynamic course develops your musicianship through specialist 1:1 vocal/instrumental tuition, a range of band performances and learning from experienced visiting musicians with a range of styles.  Our vibrant community gives you the opportunity to work with creative writers, graphic designers, fine artists, visual communicators, photographers, fashion designers, animators, filmmakers, and creative advertisers. Our degree provides the unique opportunity to build important creative networks and an impressive musical portfolio from the outset of your professional life.

Our MA Worldbuilding brings together practitioners who want to create immersive worlds for entertainment design, production, and research.

You will design a well-researched and richly detailed world in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment that integrates imagination and emergent technologies. You will have opportunities to explore designing cultural, historical and futuristic worlds through drawing, iterative design, and 3D prototyping.

Candidates are encouraged to position their work within a professional context to help inform the visual output and production method. The function and output of the worldbuilding will be examined through a self-determined approach, whether that’s drawing on concept art, VFX, game art and design, or analogue game design.

Embracing emerging technologies, such as VR and 3D printing, candidates will be able to explore wider contexts of worldbuilding, creating negotiated projects ranging from environment concept art, matte painting, theme park design, VR experiences or table-top game prototypes. The course provides the critical and progressive space to explore the processes and contexts to visualise and build immersive, believable and sustainable storyworlds.

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.