You will be encouraged to explore new territory, experiment and challenge conventional thinking, so you can become a creative individual who is not afraid to push boundaries.

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Design and Visual Arts

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The creative industries are expanding rapidly. If you have talent, drive and qualifications, your opportunities are limitless. As a design and visual arts student, we’ll encourage you to push boundaries, explore new territory, and experiment and challenge conventional thinking.

Our graduates are building successful careers around the world as digital animators, graphic designers, interior designers, jewellers, multi-media artists, object-makers, painters, photographers, product designers, researchers, and strategists. They’re also winning awards like the Mighty River Power Photography Competition, ECC Young Designer of the Year, and the prestigious Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Award. Many of them have started their own business or initiated innovative enterprises like Workshop 6 Jewellery Collective and Indicator Studio.

Study options

Want to become an animator, contemporary jeweller, curator, fine artist, graphic designer, interior designer, painter, photographer, or product designer? We offer a seamless study path from the Certificate in Foundation Studies: Whitinga (Art and Design pathway) and Certificate in Design and Visual Arts, through to the Bachelor of Design and Visual Arts and Master of Design.

Our new degree, the Bachelor of Design and Visual Arts, has six great majors to choose from – contemporary craft, graphic design and animation, interior design, product and furniture design, photography and media arts, and visual arts. And if you successfully complete two years of the degree, you’ll be entitled to an exit award.

Real-world learning

You’ll apply what you’ve learnt in metal, wood, glass, printmaking and ceramics workshops, digital labs, darkrooms, photographic studios, and in some cases, your very own studio. You’ll also display your creative outputs in galleries on campus and at The Unitec Grad Show.

A focus on design practice

Award-winning lecturers that are active in professional practice will inspire you to become an original designer, who can achieve creative and commercial success. You’ll work closely with architecture, landscape architecture, and performing and screen arts students, where you’ll explore the links between the creative arts and professions. Better still, you’ll collaborate with other design students (contemporary craft, graphic design and animation, interior design, product and furniture design, photography and media arts, and visual arts), and exhibit your work at our gallery, Snowhite, just as you would in the real-world.

Industry Links

Through innovation and research projects at our CoDIA Centre, (Generator/Hothouse) you’ll work directly with professional and industrial clients, develop ideas for commercial production, show work to potential buyers and commissioners, and begin real businesses.

Programmes available for Design and Visual Arts

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