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What next for you? > BA (Hons) Digital Advertising and Design > BA (Hons) Digital Advertising and Design

BA (Hons) Digital Advertising and Design

The BA (Hons) Digital Advertising and Design has been designed to give you the professional skills, knowledge and experience necessary to creatively use digital technologies in the making of advertising and advertising campaigns. The course has a strong vocational focus, and will allow you to prepare an innovative, creative portfolio of advertising that will ease you into a key, challenging role within the advertising industry.

Advertising agencies are fast becoming aware of a rapidly changing landscape of technology and media outlets and are looking at new ways of attracting audiences. The potential audience are watching less television. Social networking sites, computer games, music downloads, on-demand video and television, and online shopping play a big part in the lives of a new generation of potential audiences.

With improvements in broadband and converging media, agencies are themselves diversifying and opening up new divisions where new media and, most significantly, web-based strategies are addressed. Consequently, the advertising industry is seeking new entrants who have more hands-on skills with new technology, as well as a more highly developed understanding of the potentials of these new opportunities.

This course specialises in the fields of advertising, marketing and promotions, with particular emphasis on designing for new media and across multiple platforms. An understanding of graphic design and branding, moving image and animation can be utilised in many areas such as the internet, mobile phones, and ambient media, to name a few. This will all be underpinned by an understanding of key advertising strategies and core business knowledge.

Level 1

Through a series of units of study you will acquire professional and technical knowledge in the production of web-based advertising and across multiple platforms. You will be equipped with a knowledge base that enables you to innovate, and to identify and exploit new opportunities as they become available through developments in technology and changes in the industry. An exploration of ethics is central to the initial year of study.

Topics may include: ideas generation, typography, web navigation and usability, graphic design and branding.

At level 1 you will study the following subject ares:
contextual studies: theory and context; opportunities, trends and ideas; professional context; communication and visualisation; concepts; digital image; media and the web; and branding.

Level 2

This level will focus on creative thinking, on developing ideas and realising them, and on innovative approaches to the creative industries. In order to gain valuable ‘real world’ experience, you will be encouraged and supported to apply for a work placement with an advertising agency or related company. This will expose you to the latest approaches in the industry, and will provide you with the opportunity to work on ‘live’ client briefings.

Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on understanding the theory to support these skills, so that you will be able to place your abilities within the context of the industry.

Topics may include: copywriting, marketing, proposals and strategies, brands in motion and designing for campaigns across digital media.

At Level 2 the subject areas encompass:
contextual studies: debate and polemic; contextual studies: dissertation preparation; marketing strategy; advertising and promotions; design innovation; cross media concepts; integrated branding; and a live project in the workplace.

Level 3

Level 3 prepares you for professional practice through a series of predefined as well as self-set briefs. An important part of level 3 work revolves around the production of a dissertation.

You will take part in external exhibitions and competitions and will have the opportunity for your work to be seen by industry professionals through the college’s internet based exhibitions, as well as at an end of year exhibition.

At Level 3 you will study the following subject areas:
contextual studies: dissertation; enterprise and entrepreneurship – making it happen; major project report; interactive advertising; competitions; major project; and self initiated project.

Programme Specification

Click here for the full programme specification.

Contextual studies, and enterprise and entrepreneurship

The adaptability necessary to succeed as a design or media specialist comes not only from deep disciplinary knowledge. Graduates also need a breadth of knowledge and skills which some commentators have referred to as being ‘T-Shaped’. These additional skills include the ability to work with and increasingly work across disciplines, entrepreneurial attitudes and a knowledge of the business contexts in which they will operate. All undergraduate Ravensbourne programmes incorporate curriculum and learning activities designed to develop these skills in our students. Cross-disciplinary collaborative projects offer students the opportunity to work in teams with other disciplines.

The course structure draws on the creative synergies and frictions of the different disciplines at Ravensbourne and provides physical and intellectual opportunities for students to meet, learn and work together with students from different disciplines.

Students study subject specialist units, shared units and core units. Subject specialist units focus on subject specialist methodologies, technologies and processes and offer project-based learning that simulates contemporary professional practice.

Shared units are units which bring together courses in analogous specialist subject areas and allow students to gain skills common across these specialist subject areas, or to develop skills complimentary to those of the other specialisms and to work together on collaborative projects in the kinds of interdisciplinary teams common in industry. They therefore begin to introduce students to the real world context of specialism, a world where inevitably specialists work in inter-disciplinary teams.

Core units provide fundamental knowledge, skills and contexts which we believe are necessary for all the creative professionals who graduate from Ravensbourne and set students up with a model of the types of knowledge they will need continuously to update throughout their careers. Core units equip students with the ideation, visualisation and communication skills required in the creative process characteristic of design and media industries and common across our disciplines. They also provide the conceptual skills, theoretical frameworks and professional contexts necessary for students to position their work and develop their professional identity. Additionally, they ensure that students gain the promotional, marketing and enterprise skills necessary to make success happen in the real world.

Three years full-time

Ravensbourne’s BA (Hons) Digital Advertising and Design course is available as a full time three-year course.

Assessment

You will be continually assessed through preparation of written and project work. Assessment in the final year is through dissertation and portfolio.

Learning and support

You will learn through a series of lectures, seminars, workshops, individual tutorials and self-directed study but also through project based learning. You will be introduced to a variety of research and analytical methods through the contextual elements of the course and apply them in an independent major study and the preparation of a dissertation in the third level of the course. Project-based learning stimulates analysis, contextual and visual research, problem solving, creative thinking and personal reflection. You will also be supported, where appropriate, by e-learning and/or resource based learning.

Laptops

You are required to own or have access to a laptop from the beginning of your studies. Laptops are an essential tool to support personalised learning and give you access, when and where you want it, to many of the creative tools and educational resources you will encounter during your studies.

Laptops are used extensively in all of our courses. You will need one to access our network, and to research, communicate and collaborate during your studies.

Career prospects

A variety of careers are open to graduates within the diversity of an ever developing industry. Opportunities might include digital designer, creative director, web designer, graphic designer, interactive designer, copywriter, account handler/manager, and design producer.

You could become a...

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...and many more!