Course overview

  • Starts: Sept 2024
  • Duration: FT 1 year
  • Mode: Full-time
  • Fees: UK: FT £9,250 / INT: FT £18,000

Ideal for: illustrators who want to diversify their professional practices through exploring narrative communication techniques

Bring knowledge to life.

Our Illustration master's degree course will help you to engagingly convey complex information to effectively tell stories. Experimenting with an array of storytelling and narrative methods, you will master the roles of illustration and how to take advantage of immersive technologies.

In a recent survey, our postgraduate courses scored 91% student satisfaction for creativity and design, and 93% satisfaction overall*

*Source: Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, 2020

Student work

Colourful characters with speech bubbles. "If you eat all your broccoli you can have an ice cream".

Healthy eating for children 1, Emma Cheesman, 2023

Visual studies relating to healthy eating strategies/ resources for Children at Key Stage 1. 

hand drawn with words and phrases about sugar rush like "What goes up, must come down" and "sugar rush".

Healthy eating for children 2, Emma Cheesman, 2023

Visual studies relating to healthy eating strategies/ resources for Children at Key Stage 1 (ideation sheet). 

Drawings of fluff cats, clouds and stormy skies and winding string.

As long as you remember by Peng Teng Lei, 2023

Visual narrative studies, dealing with themes of Mental Health and Self- Care. 

Sketches of characters and pages from a graphic novel.

Dystopian Society by Alfie Bolton, 2023

Narrative related experimental studies in preparation for a graphic novel dealing with the theme of a dystopian society. 

A collection of digital illustrations.

Empress Nur Jahan by Subhashree Iyer, 2023

Studies for an educational related visual narrative dealing a Queen of the Mughal Dynasty.

Digital sketch and photomontage of a female figure. The photomontage has black bird wings and feathers for her hair with eyes in her clothes and the digital art is a lady held up by puppet strings.

H.P Lovecraft by Zenab Khan, 2023

Illustrative studies inspired by the work of H.P Lovecraft. 

16 colourful illustrations of nuns, churches, hills and driving in California.

‘The Sisters of the Immaculate Hearts’ by Rachel Harrison, 2023

Educational animation related frames dealing with the theme of ‘The Sisters of the Immaculate Hearts’ (Context: 1960s California). 

A collection of sketches, figures posing and putting on lipstick.

Drag Culture by Sasha Miller, 2023

Experimental illustrative studies relating to ‘Drag’ culture. 

Sketches of a landscape with mountains and trees.

Traditional Children’s Narratives Revisited, Sutton Belyea, 2023

Narrative/ information flow related experiments dealing with traditional child related stories/ tales. 

Children's story book covers. titled, "The third little pig built a fortress" and "Goldilocks is a troublemaker".

Traditional Children’s Narratives Revisited, Sutton Belyea, 2023

Narrative/ information flow related experiments dealing with traditional child related stories/ tales. 

Why study this Illustration master's degree?

  1. Embrace the natural storyteller in you
  2. Explore cutting-edge storytelling and narrative methods
  3. Augment your understanding of immersive illustration technologies
  4. Supercharge your illustration business
  5. Tap into exceptional industry connections.

Throughout your MA Illustration course in London, you will explore the roles of illustration today and its wide-ranging professional applications moving forward. You will experiment across narrative and storytelling methods, which will enable you to present and reposition information in a strategic, accessible and engaging fashion. 

You will examine complex knowledge, data and information and bring it to life with empathy, which will free you to tell stories that need to be told and ensure that no message is lost in translation. 

Join the new MA Illustration course where creative minds prosper. By taking on consultancy and organisational roles, as well as developing your own illustration practice, this master's programme is designed to make you truly industry ready. 
 

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Key study topics

  • How creative narrative and storytelling methods can be used to make complex information accessible
  • Expanded models of professional illustration, including collaborative, interdisciplinary, facilitation and commercial practices
  • The use of illustration to foster community, facilitate dialogue, witness and document human experience and knowledge
  • Illustration as a distinctive empathetic, intersubjective communication discipline operating with specific behaviours, mechanisms and principles
  • The expansive application of illustration to communicate and transfer knowledge across disciplines and professional fields, with an emphasis on social practice
  • How to develop your creative practice with exposure to different methods of traditional and digital illustration and physical production
  • Explore storytelling techniques using immersive technologies to engage mass audiences
  • Experiment with how narratives can be told across media and platforms in linear, nonlinear, interactive, participatory and immersive ways

The specifics

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In the media

Article cover. Emma Cheesman’s Shortlisted Artwork 'Summer Days' to the left of the Article. Two colourful figures in the forefront are eating and drinking. The London Skyline features in the background.

Londnr.com, Mar 2023

One of our talented students, Emma Cheesman has had her artwork published by Londnr magazine after being shortlisted in a competition for professional artists.

Read the full article