Visual Design

Course description

Visual Design provides opportunities for students to enjoy making and studying visual design artworks and to become informed about, understand and write about their contemporary world. It enables students to represent their ideas and interests about the world in visual design artworks and provides insights into new technologies such as graphic design software, digital photo editing, graphic softeware etc, different cultures, and the changing nature of visual design in the 21st century. Students are provided with opportunities to make and study visual design artworks in greater depth and breadth than through the Visual Arts elective course.

What students learn

Students learn about the pleasure and enjoyment of making different kinds of visual design artworks in print, object and space–time forms. They learn to represent their ideas and interests with reference to contemporary trends and how web designers, architects, commercial and industrial designers, space, light and sound designers, graphic designers and fashion, accessory and textile designers make visual design artworks.

Students learn about how visual design is shaped by different beliefs, values and meanings by exploring visual designers and visual design artworks from different times and places, and relationships in the artworld between the artist/designer – artwork – world – audience. They also explore how their own lives and experiences can influence their making and critical and historical studies.

Students learn to make visual design artworks using a range of materials and techniques in print, object and space–time forms, including ICT, to build a folio of work over time. They learn to develop their research skills, approaches to experimentation and how to make informed personal choices and judgements. They learn to record procedures and activities about their making practice in their Visual Design journal.

They learn to investigate and respond to a wide range of visual designers and visual design artworks in making, critical and historical studies. They also learn to interpret and explain the function of and relationships in the artworld between the artist/designer – artwork – world – audience to make and study visual design artworks.