As a graphic designer, you have the opportunity to communicate with the world - to use your conceptual and visual skills to inform, persuade, and educate your audience. The Whitecliffe Graphic Design pathway prepares students for a career in graphic design, an industry that offers a broad range of creative and commercial possibilities.

 

Bachelor of Fine Arts - Graphic Design Course Outline

Graphic Design at Whitecliffe prepares students for a career in visual communication, with a broad range of creative and commercial possibilities. Creative projects challenge and develop the student's conceptual ability, theoretical knowledge, and technical skills. Students are encouraged to present and contextualise their work within the historical development of design and contemporary practice.

At Whitecliffe, we support student's personal progression by allowing for regular group critiques and one-on-one discussions with lecturers.

Students develop industry contacts and professional skills through close interaction with visiting practitioners, studio visits, organising exhibitions, and entering industry competitions.

Whitecliffe Graphic Design graduates are employed as designers by both national and international agencies, with some progressing to establish their own design businesses. Graduates are also engaged in postgraduate research within the design field. The Whitecliffe BFA Honours year offers graduates the opportunity to further explore design research and prepares students for Master's level study and/or creative professional practice.

 

Why choose Graphic Design at Whitecliffe?

• The Bachelor of Fine Arts is internationally recognised for being a creative visual research programme rather than a purely technical course. In the Whitecliffe Graphic Design pathway, students learn to openly explore the techniques and technologies needed to materially realise their conceptual ideas.

• Semester One in Year One offers a broad course of study that helps to develop a wide frame of reference, providing useful skills for design students in the long term. Drawing, photography, print, and idea-driven courses at this level add depth to the students' practice, developing their ability to draw on a range of methodologies and to propose a creative response to design scenarios. During this semester, students build friendships and working relationships with students from other disciplines, which often prove invaluable throughout their degree and beyond art school.

• Contextual courses provide students with a perspective on, and insight into how they fit into the world, and how current practice sits within a historic framework. Contemporary theories are taught alongside design history, and students are also taught the concerns specific to particular disciplines of design e.g. information graphics or publication design.

• Whitecliffe offers significant individual attention to students. Teaching has a strong emphasis on critical thinking. All of this is supported by up-to-date technology and facilities.

• Courses are designed to be industry-relevant and the department and faculty maintain strong relationships with the industry. All lecturers are active researchers and practising designers.

• It is important to us that our students and graduates are winning awards and getting great jobs. We also add that the aim of a tertiary course like Whitecliffe's is to prepare our students to be leaders in the industry they choose to be a part of. Whitecliffe graduates are encouraged to have long, conscientious careers in design and sustainably contribute to society.