Postgraduate study in Graphic Communication Design

MA Graphic Communication Design and MA Communicating Complexity at Central Saint Martins explore how the production of knowledge is intertwined with its form, context and circulation. Both courses take an expanded approach to the idea of research. Through iterative and open-ended experimentation with visual media and tools of communication, students develop work that investigates existing knowledge, activates positions, and projects new forms of knowledge—within and beyond the discipline.   

MA Graphic Communication Design combines studio and writing practice to engage critically with graphic design as both a creative practice and a subject of study. Engaging with studio and writing practice as a form of rigorous enquiry, students and staff together explore how graphic design is a situated and relational discipline that both reflects and reconfigures its cultural, social and environmental conditions. From this position, our community of practitioners critically interrogates the academic and professional contexts for practice as well as the very nature of the discipline itself, continually co-defining and re-defining the expanding field of graphic design. 

MA Graphic Communication Design is delivered in-person at Central Saint Martins at our campus in Kings Cross, London. For more information, visit the course website. 

MA Communicating Complexity brings together students from design and non-design backgrounds to experiment with the role of communicators in responding to social and global challenges. Combining a communication design studio with media research and analysis, this course equips you to bring clarity, context and criticality to communicating complexity. You will develop your communication practice through hands-on collaboration with sectors and industries such as media, journalism, government, non-profits, technology and science, learning how to harness communication design to improve individual, institutional and public engagement with our most pressing, complex issues. 

Delivered mostly online through a mix of asynchronous content and live peer sessions, MA Communicating Complexity is designed to fit around professional and other responsibilities. There is one intensive residential week in London on each year of the course. For more information, visit the course website.   

Course structure
Both courses are delivered over two academic years.   

Course length and mode of study
Two years extended full-time (60 weeks). Devised in collaboration with students, extended full-time is a study mode which sits between full-time and part-time. It allows students to maintain a balance between the competing demands of contemporary life and the pace of postgraduate study in an arts and design college. 

Start date: September 25, 2023 

Open days
Our next online open day will be held on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 2–3:30pm (BST). Book your place here.

Applications
Applicants are welcome from within the fields of graphic and communication design, as well as from other academic backgrounds (humanities, social sciences, engineering, etc.).   

Applications are reviewed until the course is full. Your application will only be considered after you have successfully completed an online application and submitted the required documents. Full details of entry requirements can be found on the course pages of our website.    

A note to applicants from the US: University of the Arts London participates in US federal student aid programs which means that US applicants may be eligible for federal loans to help cover the cost of study.