BA (Hons) Design for Branded Spaces

Content

BA (Hons) Design for Branded Spaces introduces you to the design of immersive and interactive spaces using the latest digital technologies.

The course offers students an insight into the future of spatial professions as well as working with commercial and cultural institutions to help them leverage their tangible, and intangible assets within a global design and digital context.

Designing spaces and experiences for brands is a thriving economy. Businesses and organisations recognise the value of experience design as a strategic tool to engage with consumers and audiences for long-term viability. People are not only looking for entertainment but also for original experiences and destinations.

The practical component of the course is underpinned by critical interrogation, where students analyse what is at stake for corporations, designers, cultural organisations and audiences in the creation of spaces that blur the boundaries between commerce and culture, public and private.

The course critically engages with branded spaces by drawing on theories, terms and debates from art and design history, cultural studies, sensory ethnography and effects studies.

Students will graduate with a rigorous forward facing portfolio of outputs that showcases work across branded spaces, interior architecture, experience design, interaction design and urban futures. The projects will evidence a critical understanding of digital innovation and a high level of conceptual engagement with digitally enhanced branded spaces.

Innovation, curiosity, creativity and the articulation of ideas through experimentation are central to the course experience. We will encourage you to see things differently and to design solutions that are unique to you both in concept and realisation.

You will develop your creativity and design knowledge through a range of practical and theoretical design practices. A lively studio culture is enhanced by contextual studies and the development of professional practice skills – essential in the competitive workplace.

You will be taught by an inspiring community of experienced designers, technical specialist and theorists, in addition to visits from guest lecturers. You will also benefit from key thinkers and practitioners working across boundaries and at the cutting edge of their disciplines.

The Diploma in Professional Studies is an optional placement year in industry between the second and third year of the course. It is a managed year of professional experience, largely undertaken in the design profession, in a variety of national and international locations. Successful candidates are selected on a competitive basis from academic performance and studentship, successful completion of the DPS bridging studies and by portfolio and proposal.

Please view the Diploma in Professional Studies Programme Specification (PDF - 164KB) for more details.

Haven’t found the information you’re looking for or want to ask a question about this course?

Make an enquiry

Monday 24 September – Friday 7 December 2018

Monday 7 January – Friday 15 March 2019

Monday 15 April – Friday 21 June 2019

Course units

In common with all courses at the University of the Arts London, this course is credit rated. The course is 3 years, levels 4-6. Each year requires you to achieve 120 credit points. To be awarded the BA (Hons) Design for Branded Spaces qualification, you need to accumulate a total of 360 credits.

Units summary:

• Introduction to Design for Branded Spaces (20 credits) introduces you to the branding of spaces and equips you with essential skills, knowledge, and understanding to give you the confidence to navigate through the course and College environments.
• Interactions in Branded Spaces (40 credits) familiarises you with the design of experiences and analogue and digital prototyping tools and techniques.
• Contextual and Theoretical Studies 1 (20 credits) introduces you to histories, theories and debates in relation to branded spaces design, city brandscapes, branding, identity and the culture of experience.
• Branding and Spatial Identity (40 credits) will focus on fundamental and practical design processes to give you the skills and tools to confidently generate and articulate design solutions.

Units summary:

• Spatial Experiences and Narratives (40 credits) provides you with the opportunity to utilise your practical, critical and analytical skills in response to space and storytelling.
• Professional Practices (20 credits) further develops your transferable skills for employment and professional practices to help you in your future career.
• Collaborative Projects (20 credits) offers you the opportunity to work collaboratively with students from other courses and disciplines across the College, and more widely with collaborators externally.
• Contextual and Theoretical Studies 2 (20 credits) enables you to develop a broader knowledge and understanding of historical, social, practical, theoretical and cultural developments.
• Branded Spaces Futures (20 credits) introduces you to forecasting tools and techniques that enable you to anticipate the needs of design spaces where branding is integrated into the experience of physical and digital environments.

Units summary:

• Design for Branded Spaces Major Project (60 credits) gives you the opportunity to apply core design, creative, critical thinking and technical knowledge and skills developed in years one and two, into an extended personal project.
• Contextual and Theoretical Studies 3 (40 credits) offers you the opportunity to utilise all your knowledge and analytical skills related to culture and critical theory in the realisation of a self-determined and extended piece of written work.
  or
• Contextual and Theoretical Studies 3 with Practice (40 credits) provides you with the opportunity to utilise knowledge and analytical skills acquired in relation to culture and critical theory in the realisation of a self-determined piece of written work and to develop a piece of work that integrates theory with practice.
• Entrepreneurial Practices (20 credits) explores the intersection between businesses or organisations and the value of design in creating experience design concepts that contribute to business strategic and tactical aims.

The information outlined is an indicative structure of the course. Whilst we will aim to deliver the course as described on this page, there may be situations where it is desirable or necessary for the University to make changes in course provision, for example, because of regulatory requirements or operational efficiencies, before or after enrolment. If this occurs, we will communicate all major changes to all applicants and students who have either applied or enrolled on the course.

Please note that due to staff research agreements or availability, not all of the optional modules listed may be available every year.

In addition, the provision of course options which depend upon the availability of specialist teaching, or on a placement at another institution, cannot be guaranteed. Please check this element of the course with the course team before making a decision to apply.

We will update this webpage from time to time with new information as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you have any questions, use our online course enquiry form.

BA Design for Branded Spaces Programme Specification 2017/18 (PDF - 124KB)

Staff

Course Leader: Valerie Mace

Valerie joined LCC in 2003 as a lecturer in digital drawing and developed an e-learning site for Vectorworks as part of a pedagogic research project. As a spatial designer, Valerie usually works with 3D architectural environments and has more recently been integrating photography, information design, film and time-based media into her work. Her past students have received three D&AD students’ awards in the environmental design category.

Read more about Valerie Mace