MA Communication Design

• Year 1

• Benefit from our cutting-edge Digital Fabrication and Immersive Media Labs to grow your expertise in digital fabrication and making, immersive/spatial media and external engagement with the digital creative industries. The common research project module offers a series of alternatives for assessment aligned with your discipline, employment expectations and research interests. The module gives you the option of including a traditional text-based dissertation, an exhibition of creative practice, a start-up plan/placement report, and doctoral research proposals. The common knowledge exchange module will boost your employability prospects as you engage with partners across the city and expose yourself to real-world situated contexts of creative practice. Through a combination of practical coursework and lectures, you deliver your own project and develop an external engagement plan critically addressing the industrial, economic and social extensions of your own practice.

  Core modules

  • Situated Practice and Knowledge Exchange (ADA7200)

    This module supports students’ employability and career prospects by engaging with local communities, industrial partners and their broader professional field. Students will be able to situate their ideas within real world contexts, develop entrepreneurial skills, and deliver an external engagement proposition outlining the broader social, environmental, or economic extensions and impacts of their work.

  • Research Project / Dissertation (ADA7300)

    This module supports students’ delivery of their final research project / dissertation through combinations of group and individual work. It includes broader disciplinary research skills, methods and ethical practices, as well as subject-specific supervisory arrangements for each students’ research interests. This can include practice-based, text-based or entrepreneurial research outputs.

  • Communication Practice 1 (MACD7101)

    In this module students work on practical projects, that enable them to explore discipline-specific concerns, within a set of defined constraints. Students are supervised and guided by tutors, whilst developing their own path towards a set of agreed goals that align with module learning outcomes. This module also provides the opportunity to deliver live client or collaborative group projects, where circumstances permit.

  Optional modules

  • Immersive Media and XR (ADA7102E)

    This module will provide students with the creative and technical skills to develop their projects based on experimentation with immersive media and extended reality (XR) technologies. Through a combination of technical inductions, workshops, lectures, and self-directed work in our Immersive Media Lab, students will be able to experiment with 360 Video, sonic environments, AR/VR, sensors, and game engines.

  • Spatial Storytelling (ADA7103E)

    Students will explore using narrative space to create emotionally engaging audience experiences by experimenting with a range of spatial storytelling methods and technologies. The development of skills as narrative architects and storytellers in immersive, interactive, locative, game, sound, art, film and/or performance-based experiences and installations will result in the creation of a spatial storytelling project.

  • Interaction Design (ADA7106E)

    This module will provide students with the creative and technical skills to apply interaction design strategies to develop and support their practice across a range of disciplines. Drawing from the technologies, techniques and tools typical of the Smart City, ubiquitous, mobile and wearable computing and Internet of Things (IoT), students will design and develop prototype systems that allow them to explore key issues relating to our lived environment.

  • Innovations in Printmaking (MACD7102)

    Through a negotiated selective process, you will be able to explore and develop responses using the printmaking facilities available to you within the School of Art, Design & Architecture, including screenprinting, letterpress, relief printing, intaglio, risograph and digital printing methods.You critically evaluate and reflect upon the success or failure of various approaches as appropriate to your practice and ambitions, forming a positive plan of action for the future.

  • Communication Practice 2 (MACD7201)

    Building upon prior experiences, students work on practical projects, that enable them to further explore specific concerns in the field of Communication Design and within a set of student-led constraints. Students are supervised and guided by tutors, whilst developing their own path towards a set of agreed goals that align with module learning outcomes. This module also provides the opportunity to deliver live client or collaborative group projects, where circumstances permit.

  • Graphic Design Practice (MACD7202)

    Building upon prior experiences, students work on practical projects, that enable them to further develop their Graphic Design practice within a set of student-led constraints. Students are supervised and guided by tutors, whilst developing their own path towards a set of agreed goals that align with module learning outcomes. This module also provides the opportunity to deliver live client or collaborative group projects, where circumstances permit.

  • Illustration Practice (MACD7203)

    Building upon prior experiences, students work on practical projects, that enable them to further develop illustration-specific concerns, within a set of student-led constraints. Students are supervised and guided by tutors, whilst developing their own path towards a set of agreed goals that align with module learning outcomes and their own professional ambitions. This module also provides the opportunity to deliver live client or collaborative group projects, where circumstances permit.

  • Publishing Practice (MACD7204)

    Building upon prior experiences, students work on practical projects, that enable them to further explore specific concerns in Publishing and within a set of student-led constraints. Students are supervised and guided by tutors, whilst developing their own path towards a set of agreed goals that align with module learning outcomes. This module also provides the opportunity to deliver live client or collaborative group projects, where circumstances permit.

  • Digital Fabrication (ADA7101E)

    This Module provides students with the advanced technical knowledge to develop their skills based on experimentation with novel materials, and cutting edge digital fabrication processes. Through a combination of technical inductions, lectures, and self-directed work in our Digital Fabrication Laboratory, students will be able to experiment with technologies such as advanced 3D printing and industrial CNC milling.

  • Posthuman Environmental Futures (ADA7105E)

    Students will critically consider forms of creative and professional practices that engage with eco-critical debates around the environment. They will generate their own creative responses to these debates and will explore their effectiveness through experimentation and processual inquiry through critical creative responses within their own disciplines.

Every postgraduate taught course has a detailed programme specification document describing the programme aims, the programme structure, the teaching and learning methods, the learning outcomes and the rules of assessment.

The following programme specification represents the latest programme structure and may be subject to change:

MA Communication Design programme specification 7652