Day in the Life of a Design Student: Visual Practice and Curiosity

Our ‘Day in the Life’ series takes you behind the scenes of some of our Design modules and activities. In this blog we display a recent clay-making activity in our Visual Practice and Curiosity module.

What is Visual Practice and Curiosity?

Visual Practice and Curiosity is a core module taken by our first-year students in our design studio. In this module, students engage in a diverse array of visual explorations to further their understanding and capabilities in visual communication.

As part of the delivery, students engage in design CRITS (a get-together of designers and others to share and comment on work-in-progress designs) to learn essential teamwork and workplace skills.

Why is this module important to our students’ learning journey?

On Visual Practice and Curiosity students explore the principles of Graphic Design, and experiment, explicate, and contextualise different methods and techniques in material manipulation to help them develop a visual manifesto. Students work with different materials in specialist workshops to understand how each material works and how it can be applied. Some other workshops that we run for students include working with fabric, wood, metal, acrylic, and print.

Understanding their own visual methodology not only enables students to create projects in response to industry-led prompts and proposals but helps them further their own visual skills and mindset to create original, high-quality portfolios and design pitches that are unique to them.

What does this clay activity teach students?

In this workshop, students explored the history and uses of clay, before having an opportunity to explore how they might visually communicate information through a visual artefact. Students were required to create self-portraits with the clay as part of their journey in identifying their own emerging design identity and ethos. This contributes to their sketchbook archive of tests and prepares them for their manifesto and final presentation in Week 10.

Read more about our other design modules here.