SMASHING SUPERSTITION
2013 UNLUCKY FOR SOME

Film made by BAGC students Rachel Lamb, Mia Tivey, Rosie Feltwell with help from Julian Deborre to promote the 2013 BA (Hons) Graphic Communication Degree Show, Cardiff School of Art and Design.

Visit the Summer Show 2013 web page here.
Visit the Smashing Superstition website here.

Minimum Tariff: 300
UCAS Code: W210
Admissions Tutor: Ray Nicklin
Email: rnicklin@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Our students are encouraged to demonstrate initiative and curiosity in the world around them. They are visual thinkers and creative problem solvers. We provide a challenging educational experience, especially through a series of stimulating ‘live’ situations for you to address. It’s a supportive studio culture in which to explore and experiment, challenge and create, discover and debate, and make mistakes! We enable individual perspectives, and the ability to draw on own experiences. The programme helps students to develop skills in listening, negotiating, research, thinking creatively, idea generation, manipulating visual languages and techniques. Students are encouraged to cultivate and share ideas, as well as develop their own philosophy and unique way of working. We encourage the use of diverse forms of making meaning and work is produced in a broad range of media. This is all approached through a rich mix of workshops and short briefs alongside creative and industry set briefs.

In year one and year two, equipped with the ideas and skills achieved in their subject module, students choose a further module where they can employ, extend and challenge those ideas and skills. The modules on offer will include ones where students will work alongside leading researchers on an enquiry based project, and others which involve them in an exploration of a challenging subject. These include modules on: the figure in art; creative strategies, drawing and visual studies: advanced material investigation; the physical and the virtual; and narrative.

“The student work is of great depth and quality. They have clearly engaged with the topic and been effectively supported through their process of learning, development, and growth. The results are a credit to the students as well as to the academic team!” – Noreen Blanluet, Consultant & Research Associate, Co-Production

Some of the modules on offer might involve a period abroad, studying in Venice or the States, or might be an Erasmus exchange. There are also opportunities to undertake a work placement or study how to set up your own business. In all of these modules, students respond to the challenges through their own practices, employing the skills and ideas from graphics, informed and stimulated by the challenge of the module itself and by the opportunity to work with fellow students from across the School.

In the third year, students devote themselves to the exploration of their own questions, within the area of practice that they have elected through the support and advice of the academic team. In this year and especially within the dissertation and the work prepared for the final show, the graphic communicator emerges into something unique to them and to the practice of graphics.

“I was delighted to be part of the ‘Sustainable:ME?’ module and to have met both the students and the lecturers. It is the lecturers commitment to sustainability issues that has driven this inspiring module that really should be given in all schools of art and design. The project demanded understanding of complex issues such as Climate Change, world economies and ethics. All of this was successfully carried out by some inspiring graphic magicians, their understanding of the brief and their ability to transform it into the most creative forms was evident.”  - Alison Howard, Sustainability Community Officer, Monmouthshire County Council

All students undertake modules that develop critical and sometimes radical approaches to how we see and construct the world. These modules provide some of the tools that can be employed to question through creative practice how meaning is made as well as why meaning is a contested area. These will also equip students for the preparation of their final dissertation. Taught on a cross-disciplinary basis, the content of these modules will draw on anything and everything, from Constable to cosmetic surgery, from Bernard Leach to Elvis Presley impersonators, and from aesthetics to punk rock.

Graduates from the programme are well placed to join design companies, work as designers in large organizations, or set up their own businesses. Some take further training, for example a PGCE. Some elect to take their studies further by studying at CSAD for an MDes or an MA (Art & Design) Communication.