Visual Communication
The Visual Communication degree is designed to turn your passion for visual art into a career and lifestyle. Whether you’re interested in Digital Media Design, Graphic Design, Illustration or Studio Art, you can choose the concentration that fits your individual style.
Visual Communication Program Description
Visual Communication involves the practice of creating and combining visual elements to convey a specific message, evoke emotions, explain an idea, entertain an audience, inspire thought, or promote action. Our art and design concentrations cover a broad range of disciplines and connect to a variety of environments including social, cultural, educational, political, media, economic, and scientific.
Choose Your Concentration
Digital Media Design
Digital Media Design is a practice where multimedia content creators synthesize different media including video, audio, web and animation to create experiences for a wide range of applications.
Digital Media Design is an interdisciplinary concentration combining various aspects of the digital arts. Students develop a broad range of transferable communication skills in visualization, communication, presentation, writing, production, and technology. These skills provide a foundation for careers in graphic design, multimedia, web, video production, and social media management.
Graphic Design
Graphic Design is a craft where designers create visual content such as branding, app design, publication design, motion graphics, packaging, digital imaging and typography to communicate human-centered messages to a variety of audiences.
The Graphic Design concentration under Visual Communication focuses on the art of communication through images and typography in a wide range of print or digital applications and settings. It exists at the convergence of business and creativity. Graphic Design is the craft of planning and creating visual content to communicate ideas and messages, and it is professionally specialized to connect users or consumers to brands, ideas, and information through creative visual thinking and storytelling.
Illustration
Illustration is a discipline where artists create visual imagery that interprets, depicts, explains, or supports conceptual storytelling and written concepts including editorial, conceptual, book, advertising, educational and freelance.
The Illustration concentration provides a curriculum integrating studio art with the digital technologies and freelance business practices required for a career in the commercial art field. Illustration students will develop skills to create original, effective, and audience-appropriate illustrations
using various techniques required to develop their own visual style. Because most illustrators work as freelancers the Entrepreneurship Certificate will help prepare them for self-employment or the workplace.
Studio Art
Studio Arts is a creative pursuit where artists focus on the expression of individual ideas and experiences through a variety of traditional and contemporary 2D or 3D art practices including ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and more.
The Studio Art concentration under the Visual Communication degree provides a major for students who plan to pursue studio art as professionals or a studio art-related graduate degree. Students are to choose between a 2D or 3D concentration. Visual Communication: Studio Art requires a sophomore portfolio review and successfully completing a capstone senior exhibition.
Digital Media Design is a practice where multimedia content creators synthesize different media including video, audio, web and animation to create experiences for a wide range of applications.
Graphic Design is a craft where designers create visual content such as branding, app design, publication design, motion graphics, packaging, digital imaging and typography to communicate human-centered messages to a variety of audiences.
Illustration is a discipline where artists create visual imagery that interprets, depicts, explains, or supports conceptual storytelling and written concepts including editorial, conceptual, book, advertising, educational and freelance.
Studio Arts is a creative pursuit where artists focus on the expression of individual ideas and experiences through a variety of traditional and contemporary 2D or 3D art practices including ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and more.
Students begin their studies with a targeted foundation program learning art and design theory in a studio setting. As students advance through the Visual Communication program, they focus on specific areas of interest within their concentration. Students can also choose interdisciplinary electives to further explore related fields of study and broaden their skills.
Students begin their studies with a targeted foundation program learning art and design theory in a studio setting. As students advance through the Vsual Communication program, they focus on specific areas of interest within their concetration. Students can also choose interdisciplinary electives to further explore related fields of study and broaden their skills.
Visual Communication Program Goals
- Combine visual elements to communicate a specific concept, message or theme
- Support and defend conceptual, visual, and executional decisions in written and oral formats
- Investigate contemporary visual communication processes and strategies
- Experiment with a variety of conceptual, visual and executional approaches
- Incorporate technology into creative processes and/or visual solutions
- Critique the effectiveness of visual solutions
- Examine historical contexts of visual communication
Facilities
Special facilities for this program include a Graphic Design classroom with fifteen Macintosh computers, with Internet access, projection system, storage area, and a professional quality laser printer. The Art Program also makes use of a painting/drawing studio, sculpture studio, twenty five-seat lecture room, ceramics studio (located in the Annex building across campus), The Nutting Art Gallery and a printmaking lab. Digital Media Design majors also have access to a Midi lab, state of the art sound recording studio, state of the art television studio and Media Arts classrooms. We are in the process of building a photography studio and darkroom on the second floor of the Student Union. These new facilities will be used for the Photography courses, 3-D Graphic Design, Graphic Design III, Animation courses and the WLU Photography Club.
Resources
Special facilities for this program include a Graphic Design classroom with fifteen Macintosh computers, with Internet access, projection system, storage area, and a professional quality laser printer. The Art Program also makes use of a painting/drawing studio, sculpture studio, twenty five-seat lecture room, ceramics studio (located in the Annex building across campus), The Nutting Art Gallery and a printmaking lab. Digital Media Design majors also have access to a Midi lab, state of the art sound recording studio, state of the art television studio and Media Arts classrooms. We are in the process of building a photography studio and darkroom on the second floor of the Student Union. These new facilities will be used for the Photography courses, 3-D Graphic Design, Graphic Design III, Animation courses and the WLU Photography Club.
Contact
Please contact us anytime to discuss your future.
Welcome
Dr. Martyna Matusiak
Professor of Art, Chair
College of Liberal and Creative Arts
Department of Media and Visual Arts
OfficeFine Arts 205CUB125
304.336.8417
martyna.matusiak@westliberty.edu
