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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
See the work of WLU's Visual Communication seniors.
Contact
Please contact us anytime to discuss your future.
Welcome
Brian Fencl
Professor of Art, Interim Chair
College of Liberal and Creative Arts
Department of Media and Visual Arts
Office: Fine Arts 202 CUB125
304.336.8433
bfencl@westliberty.edu
