In Year 12 Students investigate the practices used by designers currently working to develop & evaluate their work (U3 AoS1). They also learn strategies to understand & analyse the use of visual langauge in design examples (U3 AoS2). The majority of the subject is comprised of the SAT folio (U3 AoS3, U4 AoS1, AoS2) where students complete an 18 week design process developing solutions to a design problem they have identified.
Year 11s may only enrol in this subject if they have completed Unit 1/2 in Year 10.
Design Thinking, Image Making, Time management, Collaboration, Adaptability
Students will investigate and compare the practices and work of multiple designers working currently. By looking at their use of visual langauge, intended target audience and professional working environment you will gain understanding of how designers are influenced in the decision making, and how these decisions affect the design process.
You will also investigate how visual language is created and used to influence an audience/users, and how this draws upon wider cultural and contextual understandings when examples are presented in different fields. Essentially you are studying how design manipulate and influence the audience or user through the use of aesthetic qualities and visual language.
You will also complete your SAT folio, identifying an issue and investigating its causes and impacts through primary and secondary research methods (interviews, surveys, observations, case studies, journal articles, news reporting, etc) before constructing a brief that defines this problem and proposes two complimentary design needs as solutions. You then follow a double diamond design process to develop your proposed solutions, working to develop ideas and test options while collecting feedback along the way.
TL:DR?
How designers work in different fields
What influences their choices as designers
How visual language is used to communicate and manipulate users/audience
How designers identify potential problems
How designers work (practical exploration - SAT Folio)
U3 AoS 1 - Research report + practical exercises exploring the practice of 2 contemporary designers (10%)
U3 AoS2 - Short answer under test conditions (10%)
U3 AoS3 - Folio Submission
U4 AoS1 - Folio Submission
U4 AoS2 - Folio Submission + Final design solutions (Folio - 50%)
End of year exam (30%)
Any creative field, or anything involving people! Fields included in the study design are: Communication Design, Industrial Design, Architecture & U.I./U.X., but you can take these skills into anything that involves communication, ideation & prototyping, messaging or collaboration.
VCD (and any folio subject) are also a great foundation for the types of assessment used at tertiary level.
Top Designs 2025: https://museumsvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/learning/top-designs-2025/visual-communication-design/