Courses
FdA Digital Design
Interactive Design pathway
Photography and Motion Graphics pathway
This course will educate you to be the adaptable new media designer, photographer and image producer that industry and business require.
In the past, design houses employed specifically skilled people for different roles. Today, multi-skilled computer literate designers are required who can design well and produce work for a variety of different media outputs, including web, TV, print, and computer games.
Course Structure and Content.
Divided into two overlapping pathways this two-year course allows you to develop specialist skills that will complement your growing design awareness. Both years are taught at the City of Bath College. Throughout the two years you will develop your own ideas, practically through a number of different projects, establishing your own creative identity. The course is entirely coursework based and can be taken in both full-time mode and part-time modes.
Digital Design shares common modules covering the important skill areas that you would experience in industry. Shared module titles include Print and Web Design, Video and Image, Typography and Motion, Professional Studies, Critical and Historical Studies. These shared modules will be inflected towards your pathway where appropriate. Whether you wish to be a photographer or interactive designer these shared modules will complement and enhance the portfolio of skills you will gain from completing this course.
The Photography and Motion Graphics pathway teaches students photography and related disciplines for the digital age. Established photographic principles and methods will be covered. You may already have a photographic qualification and this course will allow you to further those skills and complement them, with other areas such as video, image manipulation, typography and web design. If you don’t have much photography experience then the traditional photography principles are covered early in the course. The pathway develops on from this to cover many areas of photographic practice alongside digital skills. Specialist module titles are: Photography Principles, Editing and Manipulation, Applications of Photography, Photography Locations.
The Interactive Design pathway teaches the multimedia skills needed to become a new media designer/producer. A strong design awareness underpins a successful interactive designer as well as competency in many skill areas, including web design, image generation and sequencing, and also programming. For example, interactive DVD’s require video production and understanding of narrative knowledge; computer game design requires knowledge of 3D modelling, understanding of gaming issues and as well as planning skills. All these areas are covered in the course. Specialist module titles are: Design Principles, Design for Interactivity, Software and Usability, Computer Game Design.
Professional experience and graduation
In the second year, you’ll have the chance to gain real professional experience, partly through work placement in local companies, but also through involvement the course’s student-run company located in a local business incubation centre. These opportunities will allow you to apply your theoretical professional knowledge to an actual business, attracting real clients. You’ll participate in the business’s development and you will learn the reality of being part of a production team.
Through work placement and the self-directed project you will be able to develop expertise at a professional level in your own areas of special interest. On successful graduation you will have the experience and skills to help gain your desired job, and the opportunity to apply to the final year BA Graphic Design course.
For further information about this course, please visit the prospectus pages for this course within the main Bath Spa University website. To return press the back button.