Борнмутский университет искусств, MA, Illustration

You will deepen your knowledge and your ability to focus on your chosen field in relation to the key aspects that inform it. The course devises specific discipline-focused project work to enable you to take the right path towards your chosen career in industry or progress to further study at doctorate level.

Unit One: Strategies for Practice

This unit requires you to identify and critically review the attitudes and understanding underlying your illustration practice.

You’ll be encouraged to return through practice to an engagement with the fundamental components of illustration. This is supported by a Professional Development Portfolio which offers the opportunity to place your practical work in a professional context in writing.

Units Two and Three

The following two units are self initiated. With the support of your tutors you will agree upon a suitable study plan to further push your practice forwards.

This may include entering external competitions. Graduates have previously won awards from The House of Illustration/Folio Society, the V&A and Smart Car (Mercedes), and past projects have included artist residencies, artists books, children’s books, graphic novels, animations, and editorial illustration.

All units include plenty of opportunities to share your work and to develop confidence in presenting your work to an audience, both verbally and visually.

The third and final unit resolves in a final year exhibition, alongside MA students from other courses including Graphic Design, Fine Art and Photography. You will have the opportunity to curate the show alongside your tutors, ending in an exciting event to invite friends, family and potential clients to.

You will also have the opportunity to attend professional practice workshops, where you will be advised on important skills such as self promotion, entrepreneurship, approaching clients and pricing your work.

We are highly aware of and very responsive to the needs and professional aspirations of graduates as they progress to meet the future demands of the professional work-related environment.

In this respect we are constantly alert to the trends within each of the respective, discipline-specific, market places.

Set within a community and culture of makers, students engage in dialogue and debate with their peers irrespective of their preferred discipline and collaboration internally or across course is encouraged.

This experience provides dynamic and interactive sessions, which are vital to the enhancement of new thinking and ideas generation as well as offering a critical arena for discussion of student work.

• BA (Hons) Degree graded at 2.1 or above, or an equivalent UK or international qualification in your chosen subject or a related discipline.
• IELTS minimum overall score of 6.5 with a minimum of 5.5 in each component (reading, writing, speaking, listening).

The MA Illustration course encourages practitioners to question the nature of their illustration practice, and its context and position relative to the creative industries.

This course provides an opportunity to further refine your creative identity, offering an exciting incubator between degree level and professional illustration practice at MA level. It is also a great opportunity for creative professionals to return to university to reflect on their studio practice and consider new directions and possibilities.

This course does not promote a particular house style or preferred platform – we are interested in attracting diverse contemporary practitioners to the course who are able to think independently and self-initiate work within a contemporary illustration context.

This course recognises an expansive understanding of contemporary illustration through the exploration of relationships between illustrator and author, audience and context. Ideas are developed through specific individual approaches to research into practice and reflective enquiry.

Students studying on this course come from a number of diverse backgrounds, including illustration, graphic design, printmaking, drawing, photography and painting. Others come from outside art and design, having had experience across other subject disciplines but demonstrating an abiding interest and evidence of a passion for illustration.

This Masters course is designed to appeal to students who are open to participating in a broad range of creative strategies, using traditional and digital methods. These include drawing, printmaking, lens- and time-based media, with ideas and concepts that might be realised through exhibition, publication, or new hybrid forms.

This course is structured and delivered to encourage and support students to develop their own distinct visual language. This deeper understanding and commitment helps our students to identify, explore, and achieve their future career aspirations.