Digital Media Practice: Advertising, Marketing & Branding Design

This module will provide students with a detailed understanding of the contexts and practice of digital media in terms of design practices and production technologies. Students will be able to examine digital media concerns from the perspective of their own background in order to evaluate and synthesise them within their own developing practice.

The module will celebrate and incorporate the student’s previous experience and practice so that the group as a whole can identify their own areas of strengths and weakness, highlighting aspects to enhance or explore from scratch. This will help students to select their optional module choices and therefore the named pathway.

This module aims to strengthen students’ development of their design process in practical and theoretical terms. The development of a design proposal will, within the wider context of the design research, support and enable the development of the students’ area of interest. Through the undertaking of a major design task, students can build on the skills and knowledge developed from other Digital Media Practice modules and apply skills from their undergraduate programmes or industry practice. This module is intended to exercise the students’ ability to create design proposals that embody clear and appropriate conceptual frameworks against which the design outcome may be tested. The conceptual frameworks should be derived from research that governs the rationale of the design proposal. The design outcome should be sufficiently developed through a process of rigorous testing to demonstrate the validity of the concepts in some detail.

This module will give students the opportunity to work with media practitioners from different fields of practice in the development of a shared collaborative project focusing on emerging media forms. The module enables the individual student the opportunity to devise and direct their own shared project in collaboration with practitioners from a range of practical media backgrounds.

At the beginning of the module the individual student will scope out the nature of the project they wish to work on. The student will then source and build a team ensuring all the necessary practical skills are covered for the scope of the project. As project manager, each student will then work with and direct their team to deliver their project using a variety of production skills.

Students will be asked to reflect upon both the processes of practical production and the experience of collaborating with other practitioners from different media industries and fields of media practice.

This module will provide students with a range of research tools that begin with the student’s own personal development and extend to those types of research most useful or appropriate to the individual student's research and career interests. The module helps students to engage effectively in relevant research strategies required in their production work and the more traditional forms of academic research needed in the preparation of their proposal for their major project or dissertation.

Additionally, this module provides an opportunity for each student to explore an area of industry practice production that develops their own career goals and aspirations, and identifies areas for development and consolidation in preparation for employment. These will be expressed as part of their Research Proposal.

Consumers have become more knowledgeable and savvy with the amount of advertising and marketing received traditionally and over social media channels. Brands need to respond to consumer needs, aspirations and trends in highly innovative relational and meaningful ways. The main purpose of this optional practical module is to allow the student to develop brand strategy skills to an advanced level as a designer and/or researcher. Students will explore the design process of creating clear, engaging brand narratives through the development of one or several client based projects. This practical exercise will help the student to understand the value of brand and design management in an era of increasingly saturated markets and how they are affected by and influenced by political and cultural trends.

A Social Media presence is now one of the most important marketing methods, with new platforms regularly appearing. The main purpose of this optional practical module is to enable students to design effective, engaging content to promote a brand, company or an individual and influence/persuade consumers on their behalf. Students will explore the design process of creating different kinds of social media graphics, how to use them, when to use them and make them matter. Developing a strategy and how to publish content via a client or personal project, this practical exercise will help the student to understand the value of social media ‘design’ within a social media marketing strategy. As part of the project, students will also learn about economic, cultural and political factors that influence online social media design, and the challenges and opportunities of social media strategy management.

To qualify for a Masters level award it is necessary for all students to undertake a major piece of independent study. The study should build upon the knowledge and skills that the student has progressively developed throughout the programme and arrive at the production of original work in the realm of Digital Media Practice. In order to allow the widest possible scope to the professional and developmental interests of individual students, this major study may take the form of either:

a. a design project, comprising a research report, all necessary drawings and specifications and, where appropriate, a model or prototype of the completed design

OR:

b. a substantial research study presented as a dissertation, to include amongst its findings evidence of visual exploration, illustrated recommendations and the development of new approaches or ideas in relation to an area of Digital Media Practice
In both cases an appropriately demanding and rigorous quantity of personal research is required.