C09131v2 Bachelor of Design (Honours)

Award(s): Bachelor of Design (Honours) (BDesign (Hons))
CRICOS code: 107049E
Commonwealth supported place?: Yes
Load credit points: 48
Course EFTSL: 1
Location: City campus

Overview
Course aims
Career options
Course intended learning outcomes
Admission requirements
Inherent requirements
Course duration and attendance
Course structure
Course completion requirements
Course program
Other information

Overview

The Bachelor of Design (Honours) is an advanced one-year design degree offered to students wishing to deepen and extend their knowledge from their undergraduate design studies. Students graduate with skills and expertise in demand from creative industries, the business sector and society. These include strong disciplinary abilities in their field that prepare graduates for high levels of creative and critical practice, as well as qualifying for postgraduate degrees, scholarships and awards. Graduates are also sought-after for their capabilities in design research, project management, communication and design advocacy.

Honours students identify and lead a major design project throughout the whole academic year. This is situated in the relevant design studio for fashion and textiles, product design or visual communication. Throughout this time, honours students apply and consolidate their undergraduate design skills, experiment with new techniques, and establish a unique design style to take into their career.

All students are guided to develop advanced theoretical knowledge of their design area and document their process and findings in an academic research paper or dissertation. This qualifies graduates to enter further PhD and postgraduate training while also establishing critical reflection and writing skills that are highly valued by industry.

Students are supported to realise and communicate their design project to its highest potential by a range of design experts. This includes respected academic and technical experts from the UTS School of Design as well as leading industry mentors. The design domains supported within the Bachelor of Design (Honours) include fashion and textile design, product design, visual communication, photography, motion graphics, AI and AR, social design, service design and strategic design.

The Design Honours degree is an immersive, in-person experience. Classes are run on campus two-days a week through a mix of workshops, lectures, and one-on-one mentoring. Students have access to dedicated studio spaces and state-of-the-art equipment and production facilities.

Students can see showcases of the excellent work from past Honours students here:

Course aims

The Bachelor of Design (Honours) at UTS presents students with a unique educational opportunity. Confront real world problems, and acquire the skills – and confidence – to develop and share inventive and creative design solutions. Acquire the intellectual capacity for thinking through design practice. Create original outcomes that attend to the relationship between culture, wellbeing and technology – and how sustainability and ethical design contribute to the social good.

The Bachelor of Design (Honours) educates emerging design leaders, and leading design practitioners. Students learn to challenge and deepen disciplinary practices, enacting design-led transformation – often in areas not traditionally associated with design practice.

Students investigate complex contemporary issues through highly critical and creative design research and practice, and build advanced communication skills to position the value of design practice to multiple stakeholders.

Career options

Global career opportunities for Honours graduates in product design, fashion & textile design, visual communication, creative industries and social, service and strategic design are expanding. Professional designers are now employed well beyond the creative industries, for example to bring design thinking and user experience design to business and community sectors. UTS Design Honours graduates are highly sought after in existing and emergent fields. Honours graduates develop disciplinary expertise while also possessing skills to practice beyond their specific discipline and contribute to broader outcomes. Honours graduates know how to work independently and thrive in teams and are equipped with the high-level communication and advocacy skills to become writers, researchers, editors, and critics.

In fashion & textile design, global career opportunities for Honours graduates include fashion designer, textile designer, pattern cutter, art/creative director, print designer and work in fashion production and fashion forecasting. Some graduates start their own fashion design business, while others work within an established company locally or with international brands.

Graduates specialising in product design enjoy careers as in-house product designers in a manufacturing company or working as a design consultant. Graduates work in emerging fields such as service and strategic design or digital interaction design, adapting advanced technologies for new experiences and networked environments. Integrated education also allows graduates to move beyond design to managing production, distribution and the marketing of new products. Honours also prepares graduates for further study in specialised fields such as transport design or associated professional disciplines.

As a critical discipline in today’s complex information rich world, graduates specialising in visual communication and photography experiment with emerging and traditional technologies to expand how text and image (whether data-driven, generative, moving or still) can provide new frameworks for social and cultural change. Incorporating a wide range of practices, graduates work in information visualisation, interaction design, motion design, photographic practice and photographic studios, publishing, web media, wayfinding, creative code, machine learning, 3D technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality, as well as service and strategy design.

Honours graduates also continue to study at the postgraduate level in both coursework or research degrees, as well as qualify for prestigious postgraduate scholarships.

Course intended learning outcomes

A.1	Develop and apply an informed, sustainable, and ethical position in design practice.
A.2	Respectfully incorporate Indigenous Cultural and Intellectually Property rights frameworks, cultural principles and protocols required to work for and with self-determining Indigenous communities.
A.3	Practice cultural awareness and demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to social and ecological sustainability and just transitions.
C.1	Work independently, collaboratively and professionally as an individual designer or part of a team, and constructively contribute to peer learning.
C.2	Communicate ideas clearly and confidently across various tasks in professional, creative and research contexts.
C.3	Ability to communicate across various platforms and draw understanding from diverse contexts.
I.1	Challenge design conventions and apply innovative design solutions to existing and emergent design practices and systems.
I.2	Demonstrate conceptual rigour when developing ideas and versatility, curiosity and imagination when developing designed outcomes.
I.3	Demonstrate aesthetic sensibility and craft skills.
I.4	Apply refined technical knowledge and skills to research-led design practice.
P.1	Ability to demonstrate an understanding of stakeholder, community and industry engagement.
P.2	Ability to self-manage, including task initiation, allocation of time and realisation of outcomes.
P.3	Ability to produce outcomes that contribute to and advance disciplinary knowledge.
P.4	Understanding of and engagement with global design industry practices, marketing and frameworks.
R.1	Independently employ a range of qualitative and practice-led research approaches relevant to design practice and or postgraduate study.
R.2	Demonstrate awareness of design history and theory and critically reflect on existing design paradigms for problem setting and solving.
R.3	Enable Indigenous-led, community driven research and design and demonstrate awareness of decolonising methodologies.
R.4	Develop, analyse and synthesise complex ideas that are academically informed and well-reasoned.
R.5	Evaluate, develop and apply research methods appropriate to the project.

Admission requirements

Applicants must have completed a UTS recognised bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline at an appropriate level.

UTS Students – Criteria for a guaranteed offer

Applicants with a UTS Bachelor of Design in Photography or Product Design or Fashion and Textiles or Visual Communication who have completed the course within the last three years and attained an overall minimum WAM of 72.5 or above are guaranteed entry. International students will need to submit the admission application. UTS above domestic students are not required to submit an application, as you will receive an email with the offer and instructions on how to accept it.

UTS Students - Course completed within the last 3 years

he following additional material to be considered for a place:

A digital portfolio of 10 x A4 landscape pdfs that display digital files, scans and/or photographs of original design work done by the applicant, which also conveys the design process undertaken (maximum size 5MB).
A 200-300 word statement addressing the applicant's reasons for undertaking Honours level study in design at UTS, and the specific learning that they are seeking given their intended career direction.
A one-page CV in PDF format that clearly articulates the applicant’s design or related experience

UTS Students - Course completed 4 or more years ago

Applicants with a UTS Bachelor of Design in Photography or Product Design or Fashion and Textiles or Visual Communication who have completed the course four or more years ago AND have demonstrated relevant work experience within the design industry will need to submit the admission application, and must provide the following additional material in order to be considered for a place:

A digital portfolio of 10 x A4 landscape pdfs that display digital files, scans and/or photographs of original design work done by the applicant, which also conveys the design process undertaken (maximum size 5MB).
A 200-300 word statement addressing the applicant's reasons for undertaking Honours level study in design at UTS, and the specific learning that they are seeking given their intended career direction.
A one-page CV in PDF format that clearly articulates the applicant’s design or related experience, accompanied by supporting reference/s from related industry employer/s.
A copy of the academic transcript.

Non-UTS applicants

Applicants with a degree which is equivalent to the UTS Bachelor of Design in Photography or Product Design or Fashion and Textiles or Visual Communication and who have attained an overall minimum WAM of 65.0 or above will need to submit the admission application, and must provide the following additional material in order to be considered for a place:

A digital portfolio of 10 x A4 landscape pdfs that display digital files, scans and/or photographs of original design work done by the applicant, which also conveys the design process you undertook (maximum size 5MB).
A 200-300 word statement addressing the applicant's reasons for undertaking Honours level study in design at UTS, and the specific learning that they are seeking given their intended career direction.
A one-page CV in PDF format that clearly articulates the applicant’s design or related experience.
A verified copy of the candidate’s previous academic transcript.

Students must refer to the inherent requirements for all degrees offered by Design and Architecture in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.

Note: Students cannot defer an honours offer. If you receive an offer but want to commence in the following year, you will need to re-apply for entry into this course

The English proficiency requirement for international students or local applicants with international qualifications is: IELTS Academic: 6.5 overall with a writing score of 6.0; or TOEFL iBT: 79-93 overall with a writing score of 21; or AE5: Pass; or PTE: 58-64 with a writing score of 50; or C1A/C2P: 176-184 with a writing score of 169.

Eligibility for admission does not guarantee offer of a place.

International students

Visa requirement: To obtain a student visa to study in Australia, international students must enrol full time and on campus. Australian student visa regulations also require international students studying on student visas to complete the course within the standard full-time duration. Students can extend their courses only in exceptional circumstances.

Inherent requirements

Inherent requirements are academic and non-academic requirements that are essential to the successful completion of a course. For more information about inherent requirements and where prospective and current students can get assistance and advice regarding these, see the UTS Inherent requirements page.

Prospective and current students should carefully read the Inherent Requirements Statement below and consider whether they might experience challenges in successfully completing this course.

UTS will make reasonable adjustments to teaching and learning, assessment, professional experiences, course related work experience and other course activities to facilitate maximum participation by students with disabilities, carer responsibilities, and religious or cultural obligations in their courses.

For course specific information see the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building Inherent (Essential) Requirements Statement.

Course duration and attendance

The course is offered on a one-year, full-time basis.

Course structure

Students must complete 48 credit points of honours subjects including 24-credit-point of core subjects and 24cp of options.

Course completion requirements

STM91898 Core Subjects (Honours)		48cp
Total		48cp

Course program

The typical course program is shown below.

Autumn commencing, full time
Year 1
Autumn session
85844 Design Research Studio		24cp
Spring session
85843 Design Project Realisation		24cp

Other information

Further information is available from the UTS Student Centre on:

telephone 1300 ask UTS (1300 275 887)
or +61 2 9514 1222
Ask UTS
UTS: Design, Architecture and Building