Do you know the difference between a logo, an identity and a brand? This unit will introduce the basics of brand and show you how to roll out your own across multiple platforms and media. 

Along the way we’ll be taking a good look at what a graphic designer does and the processes they follow in order to build winning concepts and outcomes. 

This unit is a perfect introduction to the creative industries, as it will take you through the design process steps which enable you to tackle any problem in a concise and tested way. We’ll look at the elements and principles of design, in order to get you seeing with designer eyes. We’ll interrogate how text and image work together to produce powerful communication. We’ll learn how to pair fonts and how brand can communicate value in subliminal and powerful ways.

We’ll use all of the above to teach you the basics of Adobe Illustrator. A software-keystone of graphic design and part of the ‘Adobe trinity’. By the end of this course, you will feel confident in opening up Illustrator and producing a range of products from logos to posters to 3D plans. 

If you’ve ever been interested in the foundations and guiding principles of the creative industry, or just wanted to know what a graphic designer does all day — this is the course for you.

Topics covered
Adobe Illustrator basics, elements and principles of design, pictograms, wordmarks and monograms, typography skills, font pairing, collateral design, poster design, 3D packaging design and logo file formats for digital/print sharing.  

Have you ever used a product and it worked just the way you wanted it to? Someone designed that experience for you. On the flip-side, you might have encountered a product you found confusing and frustrating? In this course, we are going to look at experience from a user’s point of view. If we better understand what they need and want, we can better create things that will be pleasant for them to use. 

This unit is perfect if you already understand the design process and want to go in deeper into what prototyping and testing do. We’ll explore our increasingly digitised society, and how more and more emphasis is being placed upon how humans interact with computers. We’ll look at the customer journey and how user flow can map out any experience (not just digital). We’ll learn how to wireframe and what A/B testing means. You’ll get intimately acquainted with Post-It notes and investigate how bias can affect test results. 

We’ll use the above to explore interface design through Adobe XD. This is a relatively new program in the Adobe Creative Cloud. Like Illustrator it is vector-based software which is perfect for UX and collaboration. By completion, you’ll be confident in using this software to quickly mockup your concepts for client sign-offs.  

This is the perfect entry point if you think the future looks digital and want to know how to make it more accessible. 

Topics covered
Adobe XD basics, HCI (human-computer interaction), UI (user-interface), GUI (graphic user-interface) and GUI dimensions (words, visual representations, physical objects & space, time, behaviour), principles (consistency, perceivability, learnability, predictability, feedback), website design, mobile first theory.

Have you ever walked into a room and instantly felt comfortable? That you understood the theme and context, and therefore the expectations of how you should act in that space? An interior designer's role is to approach space with the user’s experience in mind. Understanding what is needed from specific spaces and how they can communicate subtle messages to relax, focus, or energise the key-users. 

Not just cushion covers and paint swatches, Interior Design is one of the oldest creative industries, so this course is perfect if you want to know how to communicate concepts in a tactile way. We’ll look at how you conceptualise through mood boards and 3D models. We’ll explore spatial planning through bubble diagrams, orthographic and perspective drawing. You’ll understand scale and how we can affect all the human senses through design.

We’ll investigate the above while also learning the basics of SketchUp. This is a 3D modeling program, perfect for evaluating and designing space and the objects within it. During this course you’ll build your confidence in expressing 3D space, developing digital models that clients can move through.

Topics covered:
SketchUp basics, design process, elements and principles of design, concept journaling, mood boards, drawing for senses, model making, orthographic drawing, perspective drawing, design plans and documentation. 

Ever wondered why some photos work better than others? One photo can capture the feeling and mood of an event, while another just looks like a happy-snap? Now that we all have high powered cameras in our pockets we are taking more photos than ever before, and practice makes perfect, right? Not necessarily. This unit is dedicated to revealing the processes and theory the professionals follow to ensure every snap becomes worthy of being shared. 

During this module, we’ll look at the fundamentals of DSLRs’ the power of the phone-camera and how to plan a photography shoot using basic techniques and theory. We’ll explore how to get the shot ‘in-camera’, but also how to improve it in ‘post-production’. We’ll learn how to use light and what a little colour theory can do to take your images to the next level. 

Throughout this unit we’ll be using post-production programs (like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom), letting you manipulate your images in subtle ways to emphasise chosen elements. We’ll touch on RAW file formats and why they are the preferred format if you want ultimate control of your images. By the end of this unit you’ll have the confidence to know your shot will come out the way you planned it. 

This is a great way to build, evolve and improve your photography game, adding to existing skills or setting you up a more focused career (see what we did there?) .

Topics covered:
Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop basics, DSLR controls and settings, lenses, composition, rule of thirds, nondestructive editing, colour, light and white balance, lighting diagrams, colour libraries and preferences, using metadata, storing imagery. 

If a tree falls in a forest with no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Trying to sell a product without communicating the benefits to the right target market is a similar conundrum. If they don’t hear about it, does it even exist? This is where advertising comes in. Mixing words and images in order to grab the attention of potential buyers. 

The roles of copywriters (words) and art directors (images) and how it’s essential they work together. The psychology of layout and how viewers take in information. 

This unit looks at how we present ideas to an audience in a formal setting. We’ll focus on what needs to be communicated and how we show that through an electronic presentation, by cleverly using words and imagery to maximum effect. This is perfect if you want to knock their socks off without having to verbally say too much.

The way we lay out communication can make all the difference as to whether it actually communicates or not. In this module, we explore page layout programs (like Adobe InDesign) and learn the psychology behind reading on the screen and in print. 

Topics covered:
Adobe InDesign basics, advertising process, elements and principles of design, layout for print and digital, copywriting, art direction, font choice, persuasive writing, concept presentation, mock-up and in-situ examples and media buying options.

A majority of us will use social media every single day. Most of us in a very passive way. Scroll, flick, like and repeat. This unit lifts the hood and exposes the core mechanics of the popular social platforms. Enabling you to understand why specific posts get more engagement than others and why some achieve a cut through that build their own ‘momentum’. 

This is an important unit to sit alongside any creative industry career as social media greatly influences trends and public opinion. It’s become a major step in the communication of ideas and essential in starting movements. We’ll be exploring how writing and image work together to capture the attention of your followers. We’ll look at audience interaction and how to build that following ‘organically’ and through paid methods. We’ll learn how to understand the ‘analytics’ side and read the data your social is constantly building for you. 

This will be a chance to bring together a number of different software skills you’ve previously learnt, to plan out and execute solid social strategies. We’ll be jumping into the back end of major platforms and learning how to dial up your ‘metrics’. 

If you’ve ever wanted to know how social works, this is the unit for you. We don’t promise to make you a world famous influencer but we will give you the tools to help your clients better understand what their customers need. 

Topics covered:
Understanding social platforms, organic vs. paid content, target market identification, setting goals and engagement strategies, conducting social media audits, aligning strategy and campaigns, utilising pixels, UTM tracking and Facebook creative hub, data analysis and reporting, General Data Protection Regulation Laws (GDPR) and benchmarking.