BA Illustration

The BA (Hons) Illustration course will encourage you to develop your own unique approach to image making and prepare you to produce work for a range of applications, including publishing, advertising, the internet and alternative media.

You will learn the practical skills needed to work within today's challenging creative market. You will be expected to bring your own thoughts and influences to the course and develop an original style that makes you stand out from the crowd. You will follow professional briefs, including producing entries for illustration industry competitions, and have opportunities to collaborate with Graphic Design students for publishing projects.

Practical studio workshops will focus your drawing practice on the generation and development of ideas, observational recording and the implementation of these processes both within illustrative contexts and also across a range of new and established media.

Seminars and lectures conducted by the academic staff – all practising illustrators or artists – and guest lectures by award-winning artists and illustrators of national and international repute will provide awareness of wider contexts within creative industries and contemporary issues concerning visual culture. Recent lecturers include illustrators Jonny Hannah, Toby Morrison, Demetrios Psillos, Bruce Ingman and Tim Smart. Combining your practical skillset development with this solid intellectual grounding enables you to add philosophical understanding and an enquiring theoretical approach to your work.

Your Future

Recent student-organised events have included illustration auctions and exhibitions bringing together the work of students with that of staff and other professional illustrators such as Quentin Blake, Oliver Jeffers and Angie Lewin. These activities have enabled students to apply their learned professional skills to a professional context.

Students and graduates have gained success in national competitions including The Association of Illustrators' Best of British Illustration Awards and The Macmillan Prize for Children’s Picture Book Illustration.

Many graduates pursue freelance careers after graduation, with commissions from high-profile clients such as Penguin Books, Random House, The Observer, Radio Times, Disney and Orange. Many students are placed with major international illustration agents – two such agencies (Arena and Eastwing) are run by NUCA Illustration graduates.

NUCA's MA Communication Design course provides a natural route into continued academic development – covering graphics, illustration, publishing, typography and related fields.