Graphic Design BA(Hons)

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio advice 

Admission to this course involves reviewing your portfolio. After you apply, we will ask you to share a link to an online portfolio of your work. This enables us to see your potential and understand your approach and motivations.

We will ask you to log on to Student View to share your portfolio link. We will not be able to progress your application to Brighton until you share your portfolio.

• Find out about the specific requirements for your course.

Creating your portfolio
We’ve put together advice and guidance to help you create and share your portfolio and we run regular online portfolio advice sessions where you can get help from our expert team.

Top reasons to choose this course

• Study all aspects of design – including typography and language, type design, editorial design, publishing, narrative and storytelling, information and visualisation, symbolism and imagery, navigation and wayfinding, visual identity, moving image, writing and performance.
• Excellent career progression – our students go on to diverse roles across the creative industries, whether making a difference in agencies or establishing their own brands.
• Success of our graduates – our alumni are at organisations including The Royal Opera House, A Small Axe, Anyways Creative, The Tate and many more high-profile institutions.
• Establish professional connections – throughout the course you can regularly connect with industry practitioners. 

• International exchanges – there are exchange opportunities with Nagoya University of the Arts in Japan, Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore and the SRH University in Germany.
• Engaging audiences with your work – we’ll teach you how to promote and share your work.
• Collaborative working – just like in industry, you will connect with students from the visual communication programme in the Global Challenges modules, developing contacts for when you graduate.
• Major graduate show – at the end of the degree you will exhibit a body of work in the public graduate show, a large-scale exhibition.

Follow our course on Instagram at Graphic Design Brighton @uob_graphicdesign

Year 1

Year 1 introduces you to the key concepts of visual communication in graphic design. Through a series of studio-based projects and workshops in computing, letterpress, photography and book arts, you will begin to develop your own visual language.

Modules

• Introduction to Graphic Design

  This module provides an introduction to the key concepts and practices of graphic design. You will be introduced to the history, cultural contexts, approaches, practices and techniques that inform graphic design. You will explore creativity and design approaches through experimentation, and you will be asked to critically reflect on your practice through guided and independent study.

• Investigation and Application of Graphic Design

  Graphic Design is an international, diverse and constantly evolving practice that uses a wide range of approaches to engage with audiences. This module introduces key cultural contexts, approaches and debates that inform contemporary graphic design. You will develop your research and critical skills and explore the connections to be made between these contexts and studio practice.

• Media, Messages and Meaning in Graphic Design

  In this module you will examine, define and apply concepts, practices and debates that inform graphic design. You will explore the theoretical concepts and approaches that have been used to communicate messages and meaning, and apply these to practice by experimenting with a range of media, contexts, techniques and processes. You will also critically reflect on the ongoing debate and reformulation of graphic design as a subject area. 

• Developing a Graphic Design Language

  In this module you will explore graphic design and your relationship to it by undertaking an independent project. You will consider different areas and approaches to graphic design professional practice and develop an independent design language. As you begin to identify and position your practice, you will experiment with concepts, define approaches and critically reflect on contemporary debates and ethical considerations. 

Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Year 2

Year 2 develops your knowledge of the more advanced concepts of communication with a focus on self-initiated, collaborative, experimental and independent ways of working.

You will begin to explore the creative industries via a personal and professional development programme. In years 2 and 3 you will attend professional practice lectures by guest speakers working within the industry.

Modules

• Graphic Design: Audiences and Contexts

  This module will grow your understanding of graphic design by looking at how audiences and contexts influence meaning, an important aspect of effective visual communication. You will reflect upon your own practice in relation to external frameworks and theoretical positions and consider the responsibility and ethical implications of using graphic design as a tool to influence and provoke audiences.

• Global Challenges – Visual Communication

  In this module, you will explore how visual communication can influence social, cultural, political and economic views and behaviours. You will consider how creative practice can be an impactful, change-making tool for communicating and highlighting challenges including equality and inclusivity, creative and sustainable economies, wellbeing and climate change.

• Contemporary Graphic Design Practice

  In this module, you will consider contemporary graphic design professional practice and your relationship to it. You will investigate, explore and evaluate your work in relation to practical, theoretical and research considerations of contemporary graphic design, whether your aspirations are entrepreneurial, vocational or academic.

• Developing Independent Practice in Graphic Design

  You will be able to put the techniques, strategies and approaches you have learnt into practice in this module and consider how your work relates to other practitioners and wider global contexts, debates and concerns of graphic design. You can explore what forms and formats are best suited to realise your ideas and ambitions and how your work communicates if you experiment with different formats or media.

Final year

In year 3 you build upon the creative and analytical abilities you have developed. Teaching encourages greater personal development as you move towards a more self-directed programme of study. You will work on a series of briefs leading towards a longer independent graphic design research project.

Modules

• Articulation of Graphic Design

  In this module you will work with increasing independence to expand and refine your understanding of visual communication in relation to contemporary graphic design. A series of short briefs will enable you to respond, develop and negotiate your work in a systematic manner while also helping to situate and locate your practice.

• Critical Graphic Design Research Project

  This module will enable you to demonstrate your understanding of current social, political, global, visual and cultural debates in relation to your individual practice and the discipline of graphic design. You will also develop skills in communicating independent research findings through the clear and logical structuring of text and images.

• Independent Practice in Graphic Design

  This module promotes self-direction and individuality within a professional context and will help you develop the skills, knowledge and confidence to operate as an independent practitioner. You will work in a progressively autonomous manner as you devise, develop and negotiate a period of self-directed study which will help prepare you for professional practice through a significant body of work.

Facilities

• Dedicated design studios.
• The TECH HUB – a team of technical demonstrators who provide specialist creative software support including:
• Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects etc), Rhino, Blender and C4D, as well as web and blog-related software.
• Digital manufacturing services including laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC routing, plasma cutting and 3-axis CNC milling.
• VR headsets and 3D scanners.
• PC suite with all of the software they support as well as standard university programmes.

• Book arts and letterpress workshops, each with dedicated technicians on hand to help you. 
• Letterpress workshop (dedicated technician).
• Computing facilities specific to the needs of designers and illustrators.
• We have one of the country’s best-stocked art and design libraries.
• Internationally important Design Archives with a wealth of graphic design and illustration material.

Meet the team

Eloise Parrack, course leader

Eloise has extensive teaching experience across higher education and is a Fellow of Advance HE. As course leader she works to ensure students have an excellent education in the area of graphic design, leading and overseeing the development of the Graphic Design BA(Hons) curriculum with her colleagues in the department of visual communication. Alongside a focus on type and language, her aim is to nurture connections between graphic design, wider communities and issues within society, establishing meaningful and critical tools with which to explore, interrogate and visually communicate to a range of audiences. Read Eloise’s full profile.

Other staff who teach on the course have a diverse range of graphic design-related professional, academic and research-led practice.

"At Brighton we build on a rich heritage of traditional design, embracing process-led research and new tools and technologies through which to radically interpret transform, develop and communicate ideas. 

This is not solely as individual designers, but as informed citizens in an international community, engaging with the personal and political.

Eloise, course leader 

Summer shows 2024

Course fees

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Brighton Boost – cost of living help for our new undergrad students. Find out about how we can help with your study, accommodation or travel costs and more...
• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• Read our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf) for more on University of Brighton tuition fees.

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