Graphic Design

Graphic Design at Massey offers opportunities to explore, create and combine symbols, images and/or typography to visually communicate ideas and messages. The programme encourages students to actively engage in all aspects of graphic design from posters, corporate identity, book and packaging design through to marketing. This is achieved by cultivating a 'creative leadership' in the search for the 'new' with students considering conceptual approaches that blend broader understandings with specific design knowledge - ultimately articulating their ideas in compelling ways enriched by the diverse experiences and perspectives gained through the course.

Our graduates consistently win awards in the prestigious Designers Institute of New Zealand ‘BeST Awards,’ an annual competition that recognises outstanding design achievements in New Zealand. Massey graphic design students have won the coveted ‘Stringer’ Award in 2008 and 2009.

The course has close links with award winning graphic design studios throughout New Zealand and across the world. Our relationships with industry supply the course with an inspiring programme of visiting guest lecturers, including our own graduates, who provide students with invaluable professional experience.

First Year Students across the BFA (Hons) and BDes (Hons) share a core suite of papers in their first year.

Second Year: This year provides you with an introduction to the fundamental principles of graphic design with an emphasis on the development of creative processes (designing), idea generation, and formal, functional and compositional explorations of image and typography.

Third Year: You examine the products (designs) generated in graphic design and propose responses to complex situations through contextually informed creative strategies in a range of contemporary media to convey messages to a relevant audience.

Fourth Year: You will undertake your final major project, drawing on prior skills and pushing existing disciplinary boundaries. The programme allows you to undertake either a research enabled honours path or take a more practically focused non-honours route to create a compelling final graphic design solution.