We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified*:
IELTS Academic module overall 6.5 with 5.5 in each component.
TOEFL-iBT (including Special Home Edition) 92 or above with 20 in each section. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
Cambridge English: Advanced or Proficiency overall 176 with 162 in each component.
Trinity ISE: ISE II with a distinction in all four components.
We also accept a wider range of international qualifications and tests.
English language qualifications must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the degree you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, or Trinity ISE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.
Graphic Design has a continuously expanding visual vocabulary. It sorts and differentiates, it informs and promotes. The process is purposeful and offers huge potential for a variety of creative endeavours. Balancing pre-determined project parameters alongside personal expression is the exciting mix of this subject, as is the interchange of traditional and contemporary technologies.
Graphic design must challenge the status quo, cross boundaries, think backwards from the future and develop powerful and novel solutions. Designers should be observant and culturally, ethically and historically aware to show openness, understanding and receptivity.
At Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) we encourage bold, lateral thinking and understanding of process, technique and business, to produce innovative, emotive, enduring and aesthetic design through intense, sustained involvement with the design process.
Integrated with the practical studio work, Design and Screen Cultures courses provide a contextual and theoretical understanding of the holistic nature of contemporary design.
Year 1
You will be introduced to the theoretical and practical concepts of design through compulsory courses in graphic design, and typography. In Design and Screen Cultures you will address the key histories and theories of design.
The graphic design and typography courses will introduce you to the concept of the graphic designer as an observer, thinker and visual translator. These courses will allow you to apply basic design principles and acquire practical and technical knowledge of the discipline.
You will be able to take up to 60 credits of option courses, either within ECA, or across the wider College, offering you the flexibility to construct a suite of courses that reflects your interests and enhances your main study.
In Year 1, 20 credits of these must be taken out with Design. The remaining 40 credits can be taken from within ECA, the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, or from the wider University, subject to availability and discussion with your Personal Tutor and relevant course organisers.
Year 2
You will explore graphic design principles, theories and working practices through compulsory courses in applied graphic design, typography and Design and Screen Cultures. There will also be opportunities to choose option courses from across the University.
Within graphic design and typography the creative potential of design is covered. These courses encourage you to explore new methods of seeing and thinking in order to stimulate the creation of alternative solutions to the discipline. Digital and analogue instruction will be covered in set projects and exercises.
Our Applied Typography course reinforces the terminology, rules and guidelines, philosophies and theories of typography through historical and contemporary perspectives.
Again, alongside Design and Screen Cultures courses, you will be able to choose option courses from across the wider University, subject to availability.
Year 3
Year 3 is an externally facing professional practice year where there is a range of opportunities through compulsory courses in research and practice, externality, and design agency.
Alongside Design and Screen Cultures courses there will also be opportunities to choose an option course from across the wider University, subject to availability.
Externally-facing activities may typically include periods of exchange, internships, live projects/competitions, and exhibitions.
Year 4
Within the Year 4 compulsory courses you will work on set and self-initiated projects, design agency and theoretical underpinning, finally leading to an end of year exposition of your body of work. You will also produce a written dissertation.
You will explore the process of design in greater depth, addressing the cycle of analysis, interpretation, trial solution and resolution. This final honours year allows for focused exploration and consolidation and will enable you to identify and plan your own personal direction with which to seamlessly enter the professional world upon graduation.
Programme structure
Find out more about the compulsory and optional courses in this degree programme.
To give you an idea of what you will study on this programme, we publish the latest available information. However, please note this may not be for your year of entry, but for a different academic year.
Graphic Design graduates work in a wide range of creative career paths. The variety of projects, approaches and opportunities on the programme enable graduates to apply their knowledge and experience of the design process and their considerable skills to many disciplines.
Typically graduates leave to become valuable members of a graphic design community locally, nationally and internationally. There are extensive links with the professional world built through industry-led projects, staff research and contacts. This coupled with a range of visiting lecturers and mentors ensures graduates are aware of career possibilities within and around the field.
Previous career paths have included experiential design, packaging, advertising, digital design, design for print, interaction design, exhibition design, design research, marketing, retail design, multimedia, design management, and education.
Most graduates seek employment within a design studio, some freelance, others establish their own business and to a lesser degree some students continue their studies at postgraduate level.
A specific scheme within the undergraduate programme is the Design Agency project which, in 2013, won a Guardian University Award for Employability.
Design Agency is a flagship initiative that enables graphic design students to graduate with an honours degree and, more importantly for this industry, three years of work experience.
Each year, senior students have the opportunity to form their own design agencies. They create their own brand for the agency and advertise vacancies at all levels, from interns to senior designers, for which students in junior years are interviewed and appointed.
It is rare that students work across all different year groups of a university programme and the rewards that are gained from peer feedback are undoubted. Within Design Agency, students work collectively towards a common objective based on ability, regardless of age or experience.
Edinburgh-based design agencies act as 'mentor partners' to the student agencies and support them with the many client-led live briefs they work on.
