Description
Program Overview
Our tutors have considerable industry experience spanning art direction, copywriting, and branding. They will support you to understand advertising so that you can use what you discover to inform and develop your own work. We spend time working with students one-to-one, giving constructive feedback, and nurturing creative potential in a learning environment modeled on a real-life agency.
Our students pitch and win placements in advertising agencies to develop a rounded understanding of the global industry. We work with leading national and international agency partners such as McCann, Ogilvy, DentsuMB, Havas, AKQA, Droga 5, Golley Slater, Anomaly, 21 Grams, CULT London, and TBWA. These links maximize your exposure to industry practice.
You’ll have the opportunity to enter prestigious international competitions which have included D&AD New Blood Awards, YCN, The Drum Chip Shop Awards, and AdVenture in past years. Top agencies offer coaching, mentoring, work critiques, live briefs, workshops, competition briefs, and work experience.
Creativity sits at the core of our offer, and we encourage originality and innovative thinking. Our ‘Actively Creative’ philosophy helps you experience first-hand creative challenges developed in-house and through our industry contacts. We have a focus on employability and helping you to produce the strongest portfolio possible to secure your ideal job.
What You'll Study
Year One – Through our expert tuition, you will develop the ability to recognize, explore, understand, and build a fundamental knowledge of the elements of this fascinating discipline. You will grow awareness of advertising, brands, context, language, practices, and creative and strategic thinking. Likewise, you will gain an understanding of ‘thinking by questioning’ and then ‘questioning your thinking’.
Year Two – By the second year, you will begin to explore your talents, proficiencies, and roles within the advertising industry, covering digital specialisms through to strategic and creative work. This includes the traditional, collaborative dynamism of copywriters and art directors. You will have opportunities to respond to exciting live and competition briefs generated by the advertising industry, which demand a pragmatic approach to creativity.
Year Three – You will now have the tools to create work with a degree of professionalism that will illustrate your ability to combine the theoretical and practical aspects of the field. We will support you to plan your career path, refining your specialism, making contacts, networking, and building meaningful relationships. The degree culminates with an impressive portfolio of work, guided by your new professional evaluation skills and an understanding of theoretical problem-solving.
Work Experience
Work experience covers a broad range of activities and students are encouraged to undertake work placements during their time at the university. As well as guidance from the course team our Careers, Employability, and Enterprise teams offer support that enhances employability skills and underpins engagement with the industry.
Destination Careers
Graduates usually find employment within agencies, working as art directors, copywriters, creative directors, brand planners, and account handlers. Some prefer to start their own businesses, work as freelancers or continue to postgraduate studies.
Requirement
- 112 UCAS points from any combination of A Levels/T Level/Extended Diploma/Foundation Diploma. One qualification should be in a relevant subject; or
- BBC from three A Levels; or
- A minimum of one Distinction and two Merits (DMM) from an Extended Diploma or a Merit from a UAL Extended Diploma or T Level in a relevant subject; or
- 112 UCAS points from a recognized Access to Higher Education course specializing in art and design with a minimum of 45 credits at level 3; or
- An international equivalent to 112 UCAS points in a subject related to your proposed course of study. Please see our Information by Country pages for more information.
All home applicants aged under 21 must have GCSE English at Grade 4/Grade C or above, or English Functional Skills Level 2 at Pass. International applicants must have a minimum IELTS overall score of 5.5, with no individual component below 5.5 (or recognized equivalent).
Examples of work
For all BA (Hons) degree courses (with the exception of BMus (Hons) Popular Music Performance) you will need:
- To set up your portal
- You will then be asked to submit a maximum of six examples of work from your portfolio for consideration. The files should be no larger than 30MB in total and it is essential that no more than six examples of work are uploaded.
- Guidance on what to include in your examples of work can be found here.
For BMus (Hons) Popular Music Performance you will need:
- 112 UCAS points from any combination of A Levels/Diploma/Extended Diploma. One qualification should be in a relevant subject, this may be a Rockschool Level 3 Music Practitioner qualification.
- A Level of performing ability equivalent to ABRSM/Rockschool/Trinity Grade 8
- Music theory understanding to Grade 5 level
Performing ability and theoretical understanding will be assessed through a practical performance of (1) a set piece relative to a specific instrument or voice and (2) an original song, instrumental composition, or arrangement of an existing song that has been uploaded to a suitable video sharing platform (YouTube, Vimeo or Weibo) for remote review.
For BA (Hons) Creative Writing and BA (Hons) Creative Advertising:
- For these courses, an interview forms part of the Admissions process. Providing that you meet our entry requirements for these courses, and submit your examples of work within the required deadline, you will be offered an in-person or remote interview.
For BA (Hons) Creative Writing you will need:
- Evidence of your writing interests in the form of samples of your work. Your work should demonstrate your developing, imaginative, and creative skills.