Communication Design

Bachelor programme

Facts

Duration of studies
6 semesters (180 ECTS)
Location
Design School Kolding
Application deadline

Quota 2: 15 March at 12.00 noon
Quota 1: 5 July at 12.00 noon

Entrance examination
Yes
Enrollment
September
Language of instruction
Danish

Why should I study Communication Design

The Communication Design programme will provide you with tools to create powerful, visual narratives that affect people emotionally and engage them in your messages.

As a communication designer, you will design everything from logos, posters and book covers to websites, campaigns, videos and services. You don't just do this for the purpose of creating something that is beautiful and aesthetic – it's also about influencing people to take action or change behaviour. You will become a catalyst for understanding, change and communities in virtually all aspects, by all means and through all channels. And you will have fun along the way!

What will I learn?

Of course, you already possess a high degree of competence, when you enter the programme, but we still prioritise that during the first year you hone your basic skills to perfection before proceeding further into the programme.

We are talking about the ability to create good compositions and to use colours in an intelligent and conscious manner, but also being able to develop ideas and concepts and in particular master the programmes Illustrator and InDesign.

Your creativity will be further developed when you work with graphic design and also with web design, video and motion graphics from a storytelling perspective. Along the way, you will acquire a solid theoretical foundation that will make you more mindful in your work as a designer, and you will learn to work with design thinking, which is bound to spark your curiosity about the people and the problems that your design is addressing – expanding your horizon tremendously.

Finally, you will gain knowledge about the value added properties of design and thus the significance of design for business.

During the course of the study, you will meet both the school's own, experienced teachers and guest lecturers from the industry who are going to be your employers after graduation. You will also have the opportunity to study at a design school abroad, which may offer courses within your specific area of interest.

What is the best way to learn?

The best way to learn design is by practicing it. Therefore virtually all courses consist of a certain amount of theory, methods, instruction and inspiration – and then lots of opportunities to design in practice.

One of our favorite expressions is making is thinking, because you both think and learn through reflection on your own design process. You will realise that you actually learn just as much from being curious and experimental as from listening and reading. Thus it is not always the end result that matters the most, but rather the process that made you smarter. And therefore you must be good at pushing yourself further than we are able to do in our teaching.

As a communication designer, the computer is your most important tool, but we also emphasise the importance of working with physical materials and analogue techniques, because you learn through your fingers and you will be able to create designs with a different expression. For that purpose you can, for example, use our workshops with their serigraphy equipment, small printing press or ‘the hacker lab’ with its sensors and other technological toys.

When you don’t have classes, you can work independently on your projects. You will have your own study space that you can decorate and personalise, and you are surrounded by your fellow students. But you will also have group projects that can take place both at the school and in the field, where you can learn from each other and also hone your skills at the intricate art of collaboration.

During the course of the study you can join a study trip abroad and work with students from local educational institutions on common design projects. It is enormously exciting and worthwhile also because each one of you arrives with his or her own background and culture. You will gain knowledge about the world and about yourself.

Design School Kolding is small enough that you can get to know most of your fellow students. We cultivate cross-disciplinary collaboration between the fields of study whenever it is meaningful, and you will find inspiration from areas you would never have imagined.

What job can I get?

Communication design is a broad field, which also means that job opportunities cover a broad spectrum depending on your specialisation.

At one end of the scale you will find jobs within graphic design, where you will be working with magazines, books, posters and exhibitions, for example, and also within branding and marketing as well campaigns, logos, visual identities and postings, graphics, video and motion graphics for the web and social media.

At the other end of the scale you will find the purely digital jobs within websites and apps where, as a communications designer from Design School Kolding, your strength lies in user experience (UX) and storytelling on these media.

However, your skills within the areas of design thinking, service design and branding can also lead you to totally different places where, for example, you work in a more consultative role and guide other people through processes for strategy development or innovation. You can also become a design anthropologist who investigates user needs and pursues answers to social problems that others – or yourself – can then work on.

Værksteder

Selected BA projects

ba-projekter

Udveksling

Admission

Do you dream of becoming a designer? Take the first step and apply for admission. The deadline is 15 March at 12 noon for quota 2 applicants and 5 July at 12 noon for quota 1 applicants. Apply via optagelse.dk  

PLEASE NOTE: The language of instruction is Danish

Ansøgning og optagelse

Studiehåndbogen

Heads of Subject

Barnabas Wetton and Laila Grøn Truelsen are Teaching Associate Professors at Design School Kolding, and as a team they are responsible for the subject Communication Design.

Barnabas Wetton trained as an artist in the UK and has worked for the BBC World Service, established schools in Ethiopia from London and helped build a bridge in Peru. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy London and two of his teaching projects are exhibited in MoMA, New York. He is passionate about storytelling and typography and has broad experience as a designer and communicator.

Laila Grøn Truelsen is a trained primary school teacher and communication designer from the Design School Kolding and has a Master's in Design Theory from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts' Schools for Architecture, Design and Conservation as well as training in change management. Laila has worked widely within the field of communication design – as a graphic designer, as a service designer, as a consultant and as a project manager – in collaboration with both private and public actors.

Øvrige studieretninger

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