Location

Farnham

Start date

Sept 2026, Sept 2027

Duration

3 years full-time

UCAS logo

UCAS codes

Course: W217
Institution: C93

+1

Foundation year

Optional extra year of study

+1

Placement year

Optional extra year of study

Entry requirements

Check qualifications

Graphic Design at UCA

Ink on your hands. Pixels at your fingertips. Make the kind of work machines can’t.

A studio, not a classroom

Our graphic design studios are modelled on how creative businesses actually work. Expect collaboration, crits, fast-paced projects, and real deadlines. You'll work alongside your peers and tutors in an energetic, social space where ideas bounce off each other – just like they do in industry.

Your hands on everything

Use 3D modelling and letterpress to hand-print your own letterforms, experiment with AR and VR interfaces, tell stories with video, motion graphics, and sound – your toolkit here goes far beyond a screen. Working across analogue and digital processes builds a depth and sensitivity to materials that sets your portfolio apart and shows studios you can turn your hand to anything.

Real clients, real stakes

You won't wait until graduation to work with industry. Throughout this Graphic Design course, you'll take on live briefs from creative powerhouse like Ogilvy, big brands like Kickers, and important institutions like the NHS – pitching, presenting, and delivering campaigns with real commercial or social impact. It's how you build confidence, contacts, and a CV that opens doors.

Become unmistakably you

We're not here to squeeze you into a house style. Over three years on this Graphic Design degree, you'll develop a practice that is distinctively you –  grounded in strong ideas, shaped by experimentation, and backed by the range and adaptability that creative employers are looking for. You'll graduate as a razor sharp version of yourself.

Accreditations, partners and industry connections

WDO logo

The World Design Organization (WDO)

The World Design Organization (WDO) is a global network of almost 200 members. It is an international non-governmental organisation that promotes the profession of design and its ability to generate better products, systems, services, and experiences; better business and industry; and ultimately a better environment and society.

Two minute stories


Discover the stories of our Graphic Design students

What you'll study

The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

Head + Hand; 30 credits
Connecting ideas and practice: An intensive module that grounds you in the essentials – thinking, making, testing and evaluating – through fast-moving projects that build and connect the knowledge, skills and behaviours you need to navigate the discipline.

Career Catalyst: Skills + Capability; 30 credits
Career Catalyst: Skills + Capability focuses on building creative, technical and digital capability aligned to professional standards. You develop transferable skills through practical projects, feedback and reflection, strengthening professional literacy and confidence. This module prepares you to apply your skills effectively across disciplines, laying the foundations for collaboration, industry engagement and complex creative challenges.

Reality + Fiction; 30 credits
Exploring potentials and possibilities: A module that uses solo and group projects to test how your creative work can document, describe, and dramatize real life – but also communicate possibilities, fictions and other speculative scenarios.

Self + Society; 30 credits
Fostering critically engaged practice: A module that shapes your creative voice through investigation, discussion and presentation to audiences, clarified through critical engagement with discipline-specific, global, historic and contemporary theories, debates and practices.

Generalise + Specialise 1; 30 credits
Testing and evaluating specialisms: A module that helps you consolidate your knowledge and skills through projects aligned with existing or emerging specialisms, so you move from broad experimentation to focused practice and develop your own approach.

Career Catalyst: Communities + Influence; 30 credits
Career Catalyst: Communities + Influence emphasises collaboration, participation and real-world impact. Working with audiences, communities and professional contexts through live briefs, projects and engagement opportunities. This module develops professional agency, teamwork and networks, helping you understand how creative practice creates value, influence and opportunity within industry, civic and global contexts.

Generalise + Specialise 2; 30 credits
Shaping a personalised practice: An industry-focused module that allows you to choose, mix and explore existing or emerging specialisms through solo and group projects, to shape your own, personal direction actively within vibrant communities of practice.

Festival; 30 credits
Sharing with wider world: A module that prepares you for professional practice through the planning and/or delivery of public-facing creative work, applying critical analysis, audience engagement and sustainable principles to help define and test your creative practice.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment

Creative Research; 30 credits
Questioning through critical practice: A module that challenges you to investigate questions or themes through advanced, critical research and/or practice, communicate your findings effectively and evaluate how they shape your own, distinctive creative work.

Career Catalyst: Futures + Direction; 30 credits
Career Catalyst: Futures + Direction supports your transition beyond graduation by focusing on professional identity, positioning and future direction. Consolidating learning through portfolio development, research and career planning you will prepare for employment, freelance practice or further study. The module develops autonomy, confidence and resilience, equipping you to navigate and shape your future professional pathways.

Major Project; 60 credits
Bringing it all together: A module that brings together the knowledge, skills and behaviours you have learned to develop research-informed, critical and sustainable work that defines your practice and readiness for next steps after graduation.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Integrated foundation year

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year one

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year two

  • Independent study: 74%
  • Scheduled teaching: 26%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year three

  • Independent study: 76%
  • Scheduled teaching: 24%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Professional placement or International year (if undertaken)

  • Independent study: 98%
  • Scheduled teaching: 2%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 100%

Please note: these details are for 2026 entry and could be subject to change for other years of entry.

Course specifications

Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.

Upcoming webinars

We offer a range of webinars throughout the year that you may be interested in.

You can also view recordings of all previous sessions through the UCA webinar archive.


Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2026/27

    • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790
    • BA course: £9,790

    If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

    Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790 (see fee discount information)
  • BA course: £9,790 (see fee discount information)

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £18,000
  • BA course: £18,000

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2026 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £3,490. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources. Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of the Course Information Document for more details of the costs you may incur.

Find out what's included in your tuition fees.

Graphic Design career opportunities

Interaction with the industry is fundamental to our degree. We engage with industry through studio visits, work placements, 'live' projects and tasks either set by or co-authored by industry practitioners, as well as international competitions and collaborations. Students regularly win D&AD student awards, such as the Yellow Pencil for Best Packaging Design in 2011.

Our connections include:

  • Barnbrook
  • Boeing
  • Channel 4
  • Dalton Maag
  • Design Bridge
  • Design Museum
  • The Designers Republic
  • Fabrica
  • Fitch
  • FutureBrand
  • Holmes & Marchant
  • Landor Associates
  • Naked
  • MetaDesign
  • Mother
  • Preloaded
  • SEA
  • Sky (television)
  • The Stool Pigeon
  • VCCP

Graduates from the course have achieved high-profile roles with many leading companies, including:

  • Apple
  • Bloom
  • Bulletproof
  • Cartlidge Levene
  • Curious
  • Cyprus University of Technology
  • Design Studio
  • Elmwood Singapore
  • ForPeople
  • GIRRBACH Sü.warendekor GmbH / Germany
  • Harrods
  • Hasbro
  • Lego
  • LessRain
  • Lidl Stiftung
  • Navy Blue
  • Pearlfisher
  • Pentagram
  • Pocket App
  • Preloaded
  • Something Big
  • Springetts
  • Waitrose
  • Yahoo! Hong Kong
  • Zak Agency.

Our recent graduates have been appointed in areas such as branding, typography, editorial design, graphic design, freelance design, consultancy and brand strategy.

Lucy Nicholas, BA (Hons) Graphic Design, UCA Farnham

What careers can you do with a graphic design degree?

Graphic Design is everywhere. From the apps we use to the packaging we open, the billboards we drive past and the brands we interact with.

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.


Graphic Design entry requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see your portfolio, please see the portfolio requirements section for more details.

Select your country to find the equivalent requirements

Portfolio requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the course with the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see a portfolio.

  • UK applicants: We will invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person.
  • International applicants: We will ask you to submit an online portfolio. 

In your portfolio we’re looking for 12 to 20 examples of your current work that showcase your level and range of achievements. 

Please see the Graphic Design portfolio advice and read our advice on creating a strong Graphic Design portfolio.

UCAS applicants should also check our UCAS personal statement guide for a Graphic Design applicants.

Full portfolio requirements and advice

Emily Kelly

What our Graphic Design students say

"I honestly loved my time at UCA. It sounds like a cliché, but I felt like a name and not a number. My course leader, lecturers and tutors all took the time to get to know me and my year group. They knew each of our strengths and worked hard to get the very best out of us."

Read Emily's story Chat to UCA students

Apply to BA (Hons) Graphic Design

Please use the following fields to help select the right application link for you:

UCAS codes

  • UCA institution code: C93
  • Three year degree: W217
  • Plus professional practice year: W216
  • Plus integrated foundation year: W21A
  • Plus integrated foundation year and professional practice year: W21B

BA (Hons) Graphic Design key statistics

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