Art, Design and Media Level 1

There are no for­mal exams as part of this course. Your course­work will make up a diverse port­fo­lio which you can use for future inter­views. You will com­plete a num­ber of projects through­out the year, each grad­u­al­ly build­ing your skills and struc­tured with detailed week­ly step-by-step plans, notes and review­ing of your own work to sup­port your cre­ative development. 

You will need to pass this course to progress onto Lev­el 2 Cre­ative Media or Lev­el 2 Art and Design

3 GCSEs at grades 2/E includ­ing Eng­lish or maths or equiv­a­lent of Func­tion­al Skills Lev­el 1 pass.

This course requires an interview/​informal chat before a place can be offered, and before your inter­view you will need to sub­mit a port­fo­lio of art­work to demon­strate your artis­tic strengths. How­ev­er, if you do not have a port­fo­lio of work or exam­ples of your own per­son­al cre­ativ­i­ty, you will receive a sum­mer assign­ment to be com­plet­ed between June and the start of the course in Sep­tem­ber which you will need to complete. 

We will review each appli­ca­tion on a case-by-case basis to ensure you get a place on the course most suit­able for you. One of the ways we do this is through a very effec­tive ​‘6 weeks to suc­cess’ pro­gramme that oper­ates from the first day you start your course. This includes sup­port such as (but not lim­it­ed to): 

• Allow­ing you to change cours­es if you change your mind in the first 6 weeks — sub­ject to course availability 
• Mov­ing you between course lev­els if you are find­ing your cur­rent lev­el too easy / too hard — sub­ject to course availability
• One-to-one reviews with your aca­d­e­m­ic tutor to ensure you are pro­gress­ing and achiev­ing well

Our course enquiries and admis­sions team can be con­tact­ed at enquiries@?stamford.?ac.?uk should you have any fur­ther questions.

Assess­ment is com­plet­ed through a port­fo­lio of evi­dence which will be inter­nal­ly assessed. 

Your projects will be assessed as you com­plete them, and you will receive detailed feed­back and a set of tar­gets as to where you need to devel­op your skills as you begin the next project. This struc­ture will help you steadi­ly improve your art and design skills and arrive at the final project with a far greater lev­el of self confidence.

Although no for­mal work expe­ri­ence is required, you are encour­aged to take up oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op your pro­fes­sion­al knowl­edge through place­ments and competitions.

Where pos­si­ble, we will utilise local and dis­tant trips to sup­port your stud­ies. This may well require addi­tion­al costs to cov­er the trans­port, but we will give you plen­ty of warn­ing as to when trips will be com­ing up.

Through­out the year, the col­lege has a host of vis­it­ing groups and lec­tur­ers giv­ing talks, a timetable of these events will be on the wall in the stu­dio at the start of term.

Poten­tial career pro­gres­sion after the course.

• Ani­ma­tor
• Pho­tog­ra­ph­er
• 3D artist
• Con­cept artist 
• Print­mak­er
• Illus­tra­tor
• Video­g­ra­ph­er
• UX/UI design­er
• Web­site designer 
• Visu­al artist

You will study a range of units including:

Units 1 – 2 (1^st project):
Devel­op­ing Draw­ing Skills: Fun­da­men­tals of Draw­ing

Ele­ments and Prin­ci­ples of Art: Abstract design based on sound/​music. Infin­i­ty Records Album cov­er design.

Link­ing the por­trai­ture from Art & Design into this assign­ment requires learn­ers to use the grid method to draw a por­trait for the EP cov­er explor­ing mixed media and dif­fer­ent tech­niques, then move it to the graph­ic design grid sys­tem to apply the typog­ra­phy for the EP name.

Link units 1 – 2 with EP cov­er assign­ment — devel­op­ing EP cov­er comps to scale using a select­ed grid sys­tem to devel­op an idea for the EP cov­er. Using the grid method of draw­ing to devel­op a piece of art­work or illus­tra­tion for the EP cov­er and then apply­ing it to a graph­ic design grid to lay­out the EP cover.

Unit 3: Eval­u­a­tions, analy­sis, Peer feedback.

Unit: 4 (sec­ond project): Graph­ic design and Typog­ra­phy ( Con­tex­tu­al research into graph­ic design­ers and visu­al artists) David Car­son and Neville Brody for graph­ic design influ­ences. Visu­al artists Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Melis­sa McCracken

Pen­cil sketch com­po­si­tion of an idea. Grid sys­tem in graph­ics and in art. Cre­at­ing an album cov­er design for Infin­i­ty Records EP using a com­bi­na­tion of type and imagery/​drawing. This will include expe­ri­ence with­in cre­at­ing a logo design cov­er­ing com­bi­na­tion marks, word­marks, let­ter­marks etc. to estab­lish a visu­al iden­ti­ty for the album cover.

Unit: 5 (fourth project): Paper cut­ting, Lino print, Tun­nel book, relief build­ing. Devise a sto­ry based on a theme.

Unit: 6 (third project): Stop motion ani­ma­tion either clay or paper-based on a sto­ry pro­duced in Unit 5. Using Adobe Pho­to­shop or Pre­mière for animation.

Drawn stop motion ani­ma­tion ses­sion. The ses­sion will start with learn­ers devel­op­ing an idea for an ani­ma­tion involv­ing a sin­gle object or char­ac­ter using mixed medi­ums to explore tone and colour. Two sim­ple prin­ci­ples of ani­ma­tion will be taught to the learn­ers. Then the learn­ers will sto­ry­board the object or char­ac­ter using these prin­ci­ples of ani­ma­tion. Once the prin­ci­ples have been cov­ered and the sto­ry­board drawn out learn­ers will spend time draw­ing the objects using mixed medi­ums to be scanned onto the com­put­er. Then using Pho­to­shop ani­ma­tion tech­niques will be taught to the group to make an animation.

Unit: 7 (fifth project): FMP based on 3 themes mind maps by stu­dents. In this FMP you can either choose a Cre­ative Media (dig­i­tal) path­way, or an Art & Design (mixed medi­um) pathway.