Graphic

This course examines letterforms, fonts, type, and typography. Students will learn how typography evolved from basic symbols to the present-day's sophisticated fonts and letterforms. Students will discover the fundamentals of working with type, including the components, typographic measurement units, and typefaces for classical and modern fonts. Outcomes will demonstrate the potential of innovative typography, the functional foundation, and its place and importance in visual communications and graphic design.

This course combines technical lessons in digital cameras and related technology with the direction needed to craft bespoke outcomes and beautiful imagery. Students will develop compositional, photo-illustrative skills to capture public narratives and editorial records. As students develop technical skills, creative approaches and applications for photography will be pursued and utilized in final advanced design solutions such as advertising, product photography, and fashion editorial.

This is an introductory level course that prepares students to draw anatomically correct structures of the human body. Students will learn to draw the human figure in correct anatomic detail based on the observation of live models. This course will emphasize the anatomically correct proportions of the human body and the accurate portrayal of muscles and other landmarks by applying various techniques of shading and lighting, views, and perspective. Topical coverage includes the basic shapes comprising the figure, anatomic positioning and parts, human proportions, drawing of various anatomic parts, light source and shading.

This course will apply human-centred design to frame learning and develop solutions to design problems, emphasizing the various techniques and tools used in design thinking, conceptualizing, ideating, and processes. Through projects exploring UI/UX and creative fluidity, students will learn to integrate research, problem-solving, project development, and critical thinking techniques to develop solutions to design challenges while focusing on the audience and user experience.

This course explores the importance of workflow, technique, and technical construction methods in digital layout design by application of layout, grids, typography, and information design. Additionally, students will learn automation workflows, the design criteria for print, interactive, online, and mobile design applications, and their integration. This course balances a robust understanding of professional workflows, project, and file management, with information visualization, style guides, rule books, and other professional development requirements.

This course explores raster-design software where students learn photo editing techniques, mobile design, and video and 3D editing. This course addresses new technical skills while focusing on understanding and seeing the problems that hold digital artists back from creating beautiful and believable works. Assignments will explore the development processes, design thinking, briefs, presentations, and project reports.

Through wireframing, planning, style guidelines, single, and multi-page documents, master layout pages, colour palettes, libraries, style sheets, tables, and charts, this course focuses on the design of publications that combine grids, types, graphics, and colours through art direction processes while addressing commonplace printing and publication challenges, design conceptualization, ideation for various outputs, topics, and audiences.

This course explores the criteria for the print, interactive, online, and mobile design applications and their integration by balancing a robust understanding of professional workflows, project, and file management, with a variety of applied uses touching on information visualization, style guides, rule books, and other requirements for the development of professional quality and technique-focused projects.

This course introduces the fundamentals of package design including the typical package materials, processes, decisions, and production of a package — including current trends and concerns surrounding packaging. Through case studies, students will learn to combine creative design concepts and materials to develop packaging solutions that focus on user experience.

This studio-driven course explores the components of developing branding or corporate identity systems from the perspective of small local identities to large international brands. Students will learn the processes and considerations that impact the design of corporate logos, colour selection, type, symbols, branding elements, stationary, and other collateral elements through several case studies of prominent companies and brands and how graphic design influenced their corporate identity systems.

This course focuses on branded storytelling and narratives for advertising and their integrability. Students will explore the relationship between graphic design and advertising through contemporary examples of promotion and marketing, target markets, consumerism, visual stimuli, advertising theories and strategies, product placement, and how they impact the design process. The course will explore some of the contemporary issues and challenges in design.

This course explores the production of interactive multimedia projects by designing animated prototypes. Students will prototype elements, components, and UI patterns within a graphical user interface, a combination of animation, audio, video, gesture control and navigation patterns and receive feedback using various input/output methods. Interface types will range from websites to native apps used in the game industry, education, simulators, computer-based training, and other applications.

This course focuses on professional-level vector illustration development covering a range of styles as determined by each student’s professional aspirations. Students learn technical competencies, art direction, market research, and creative approaches to vector design software. Additionally, students will apply knowledge of integrated software design to work fluidly between vector, raster, layout, and moving media software.

This course introduces the fundamentals of web site development. The students will learn about the structure, and components of code-based languages, and website programming. Students will learn to work with text, tables, tags, images, forms, and hyperlinks to design, and create a fully functional website.

This course prepares students for the professional world by preparing them for job interviews and helping them compile and defend a first draft of their portfolio— demonstrating skills relative to a career in graphic design. Students are encouraged to identify a preferred skill set and style to polish and develop. Feedback will come in the form of industry, instructor and peer critique.

This course will explore the strategic role of graphic design in advertising. Students learn the relationship of context advertising through the current trends in promotion and marketing, establishing a target market, consumerism, visual stimuli, advertising theories and strategies, product placement, and how they impact the design process. Students will learn the importance of meeting deadlines, professional presentation, and attention to detail when designing advertising collateral.

In this course, students will build the skills to create interactive content in various outcomes, from animation to video production, projection mapping, application design, and augmented and virtual reality design. Students will continue to apply and learn the fundamentals of user interface design with applications and websites while understanding the functionality, standards, and patterns interface design requires within the context of experiential design.

This course will combine knowledge gained from earlier print, publication, web, and dynamic media courses to develop, manage, and produce a variety of electronic outputs with a focus on technical capacity and production management skills.

This course will prepare students for graduation and their final portfolio and be able to explain and defend their portfolio and pieces to a panel of their peers, faculty, and industry via presentations, written defences, portfolios, and portfolio events. All portfolio components should demonstrate the student's mastery of the program's core competencies while highlighting the uniqueness of their work.