School of Architecture and Design

Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Visual Arts (Open for Admission)

English
138 credits
For students entering the program at the Freshman level
(Please click here for more info on the Freshman program)
108 credits
For students entering the program at the Sophomore level
(holders of a recognized Baccalaureate or Freshman diploma - equivalent to 30 credits)

Courses

General Education Common Core
PHO225Advanced Black and White Photography
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: PHO224
Students will acquire and implement the exposure and development techniques of black and white photography by using Ansel Adams’ Zone System.
CVA215Advanced Computer Graphics
3 credits
This course shows how to use Adobe Photoshop to perform many different image-processing techniques. In this course, students will learn how to use several tools for selecting parts of images, applying several filters and effects in order to create professional looking illustrations.
CVA205Design Foundations
3 credits
The aim of this course is to introduce the students to the basic principles of 2D design and its characteristics. It teaches where, when and how to consciously handle compositional elements, with regard to the esthetic and design logic. Students will learn the basic criteria and means of expression that accompanies the methodology (observation, analysis, inspiration, and composition).
CVA220Drawing for Animation and Sketching
3 credits
Students will build a solid foundation in drawing the human figure in motion and will develop a strong draftsmanship of traditional drawing skills. Examination of concepts and techniques for animation with emphasis on developing the drawing skill sets particular to the practice of animation, both 2D and 3D.
CVA210Fundamental of Computer Graphics
3 credits
Students will acquire the skills to turn out professional-looking graphics for web or print with Adobe Illustrator software. Through practical exercises, they will become fluent in the premier program for line art, logos, vector graphics and quick page layout, as well as learn tricks and time efficient techniques to keep their work clean and professional.
CVA200Fundamentals of Typography
3 credits
This course details the importance of typography in design and its essential significance in the graphic, printing and digital fields. It makes the students more aware of typography’s advantages in communication. It teaches the character anatomy and its use in different contexts to optimize its results esthetically and practically. It also explains the different criteria when it comes to choosing a font and the importance of its readability in all media formats: books, magazines, posters, websites, logotypes, etc.
CVA225Introduction to 2D Animation
3 credits
This course will teach the basics of the After Effects CS application package. The students will learn about the world of 2D motion graphics, compositing and visual effects. Prerequisites: Completion of the Adobe Photoshop Basic Skills 1 and 2 courses, general graphics background and experience with Adobe Illustrator, and/or Premiere helpful.
AUV449Introduction to 3D Animation
3 credits
Students will acquire and implement the fundamentals of 3D animation by using the Maya software.
CVA230Introduction to Digital Media
3 credits
The course aims at introducing the students to the different types of media (text, images, sound, video, etc.) and the technology tools and formats used for manipulation and storage. It will highlight the difference between analog and digital formats, hardware and software, different types of connectivity and I/O devices. Then, every media is studied separately.
TLV351Introduction to Editing
3 credits
Introduction to video montage: the various theories of montage (Eisenstein, Bazin, Deleuze, etc.), as well as to various styles of editing. Instruction on how to use Avid, as well as use of Avid to make several short video exercises.
Specialization
CVA440Advertising Design
3 credits
The advertising project is an important and distinct area of study within the visual communication industry. The course shares some common modules with visual design but has a strong emphasis on the relationship between the strategic thinking, design, to creative thinking and implementations, and the ability to direct the work of others. Students are encouraged to develop key skills sought by employers, such as team working, effective communication and presentation skills, leading to greater confidence in the workplace.
CVA240Arabic Typography
3 credits
In this course, students will investigate the basic aspects of Arabic letterforms and typography through a variety of projects. Students are introduced to the historical background technical and esthetic issues, and communicative abilities of typography as individual forms and as a text.
CVA425Branding and Packaging
3 credits
This course emphasizes the application of graphic design elements to various forms of packaging. Packages are analyzed and positioned from a marketing point of view. Brand marks, visual graphics and color schemes are developed for individual products and extended product lines. This class is geared to those interested in product packaging and graphic design as well as those seeking to create portfolio-quality design work.
CVA325Freehand Graphics
3 credits
The course is a graphic project workshop, where the student learns to create a concept, to think of and conceive a graphic project. To execute quickly a presentation which communicates clearly the student’s response to the problematic or commission.
CVA340Graphic and Advertising Design I
3 credits
This workshop is the first professional approach, which merges the technical know-how and puts it to the service of creativity. It helps creating the conception of logos, posters, in addition to the layout and the cohabitation of images and works on different supports.
CVA350Graphic and Advertising Design II
3 credits
This course enables students to transform the verbal content into a graphic language. Its intervention in the elaboration of communication supports can touch a part of the graphic chains or its globalism. The styling of geometric forms in the conception of posters in addition to the use of the “mixed media” technique will be part of the proposed program. Visual composition is essential in the creation of the projects, which will be launched throughout the semester. The concept, creativity, coherence and execution will be the criteria of success.
CVA235Grids
3 credits
Students will explore projects of greater complexity; learn how to analyze substantial data, appreciate the design functions of relating ideas and develop logical structural systems to organize information for legible and clear communication. Students will be able to transform manuscripts into publications i.e. book design, newspaper, magazine, and instruction manual and for mobile application. They will have to follow a design process to assess typographical text application, expression, hierarchy, sequential design, layout and page systems including production.
CVA315Marketing and Advertising
3 credits
The initiation of the students to the basics of marketing enables the students to go on in a methodological and scientific way in order to orient their creativity and commercial communication.
CVA310Principles of Advertising
3 credits
Students will build an in-depth knowledge of advertising via a clear and academic theoretical teaching as to its aspects, the strategies it uses, the psychological approaches that allows it to convince and therefore influence a well-defined target audience, and eventually to zero in on the media supports of the advertising communication used.
DIM210User Centric Design
3 credits
This course will enable students to properly design any digital interface by following a detailed, fun and modern process based on the end users’ behavior, interests and frustrations.
CVA320Writing for Advertising
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to put weight on the power of ideation in visual communication: the importance of new creative ideas, spoken language and its application, its relation to the theme at hand, and the potential options between spoken language and slang. Adapting the same message in different languages such as English-French and vice-versa.
Electives
AUV536Advanced 3D Animation
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: AUV339 or AUV449
This course covers in depth three categories of objects, characters, vehicles and environment. Students will learn the process of creating, texturing, rigging and animating a character. They will learn how futuristic cars are built in CG movies and how to make them look so real. And finally they will create eye-catching scenery to shoot a 15 seconds movie featuring all the elements they have created in the course.
CVA275Advanced Photoshop
3 credits
Advance production techniques in Adobe Photoshop. Class explores and implements digital imaging theory and processes to enhance and retouch photographs and create new works of art.
CVA270Advanced Typography
3 credits
In this course, students will learn to design esthetic projects based only on typography and to express and execute their ideas to solve design problems.
DIM420Advanced User Interface Design
3 credits
This course will give students an in-depth look at the advanced techniques of creating heavy and complicated user interfaces.
CVA470Advertising Photography
3 credits
The course focuses on professional photographic illustration, in order to inform and prepare the students to translate an acceptable visual for an advertising project, while using the photographic digital media.
CVA265Calligraphy
3 credits
The students, at the end of the course, will be able to recognize and use the Arabic letter (family, construction and composition), and will be able to write with a graphic pen through exercises of calligraphy and tracing. They will be able to compose texts and letters. To better master typography depending on conventional methods being applied in infographics fields, students will learn the different techniques of composing letters and the harmony of composition. This course enables students to better use the Arabic letter in logo designs, hand written slogans, etc.
CVA285Comics
3 credits
The topic of “Comics” is an art unto itself and requires many abilities. In this course, students will learn to express their “pen strokes” and their imaginations in different alternative domains: advertising, communication, cinema and animation.
CVA375Consumer Behavior
3 credits
The objective of the course is to enable students to better understand the buying motivation and the decision-making process, to better guide them in their choices and realization of advertising concepts.
CVA380Corporate Design
3 credits
Corporate Design is an exploration into the idea that memorable visual messages with text have the greatest power to inform, educate, and persuade an individual in general and a potential consumer in particular. This course is an attempt to discover why some images are remembered while most are not.
CVA250Critical Thinking
3 credits
Trying to stop the creative stagnation of students, this course, as its name indicates, tries to integrate a polyvalent and flexible platform which answers the problems which come up throughout the semester, going through the technological evolution and its impact on the notion of creativity within advertising and graphics. This combination within all its parameters, presents itself under the shape of a workshop where « critical thinking » plays an important role of the motor within communication.
CVA255Cultural Studies
3 credits
This is an interdisciplinary field that looks different depending on the context in which it is practiced. This course focuses on the multiple perspectives of culture, including theoretical positions, high and low culture distinction, the rise of mass culture, ideology, racism, social resistance, etc. through diverse case studies including literature, art, music, theatre, online culture, etc.
AUV223Digital Illustration
3 credits
The students will create, draw and illustrate using techniques and tools from different software. The students will be able to integrate different shapes and forms into a cohesive work of art.
PHO461Fine Arts Photography
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: PHO202 or PHO447
Students will gain an appreciation and understanding for the fine art of photography through the study of basic photography skills and concepts. Students will start with a digital unit emphasizing composition and color. Students will also learn to operate and manipulate a 35mm SLR camera along with black and white film processing and printing in the darkroom. In addition, students will experiment with hand-tinting, multiple images and computer manipulation with Photoshop. Students will also learn various presentation techniques including dry mounting with a hot press and mat cutting.
DIM220Fundamentals of Interaction Design
3 credits
Students will implement the foundations of interactive media including user-interface design concepts, optimization/performance issues, resources and tools. Students combine audio, video, imaging, animation, and other media formats to construct an interactive product using industry-standard software.
CVA485Game Design
3 credits
Students acquire the fundamentals of game mechanics, game art, and game narratives.
CVA295History of Advertising and Media
3 credits
This course is designed to explain to students the rise of advertising to its position of prominence. It starts with the development of advertising as a communication tool, a cultural and economic phenomenon, and as a force that both constructs and reflects society. It retraces worldwide and local advertising campaigns, which have labeled advertising, and the commencement of the digital advertising era.
CVA395History of Contemporary Art
3 credits
This course presents the notion of contemporary, as related to art, and goes through groups, movements and tendencies that governed contemporary art after 1945 in different countries, going through the post-war years and the transition between modern and contemporary and taking in the 2000-2010 decade, and historically the 40s-90s years in addition to events which were going on in France, Italy, the United States and Asia.
CVA390History of Digital Media
3 credits
This course aims at introducing students to the use of digital tools in research, analysis, visualization, and sharing of historical data, documents, and texts. The goal is to provide a largely open/free toolbox that may be useful in the students' research activities. Furthermore, we will focus on understanding and analyzing the various shapes digital history takes and the possibilities it provides for new forms of scholarship.
CVA290History of Graphic Design
3 credits
This course is a general overview of the history of graphics. It goes back to the first inscriptions in caves, progressing through time and arriving at the internet, all while going through the origin of symbols, different alphabets, printing, logos, typography, layout and new media and even some artistic trends.
CVA260Illustration Art
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to initiate students to the art of illustration on paper or any adequate material. Students will learn how to pick the theme, how to come up with the concept, and how to proceed with the necessary steps to the final execution: ink, gouache, watercolor, pastel and acrylics are the techniques to learn.
FLM319Introduction to Cinematography
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: PHO225
This is an introductory course where the student learns how to frame and assemble images; he or she uses different type of images to create a cinematic expression based on the indirect time movement images.
AVC204Introduction to Contemporary Cinema
3 credits
The student is introduced to contemporary films and how films reflect and contribute to the values and culture of a society. Students will explore dominant forms by examining Hollywood cinema, classical and post-classical film, European cinema, and also by examining alternative cinema, art cinema, key movements and concepts including genre, spectatorship and authorship.
FLM316Introduction to Scriptwriting
3 credits
The students will acquire basic knowledge and techniques of writing a narrative script for film. The students will be able to create and develop characters, and story line for classical film structure.
PHO463Landscape Photography
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: PHO202 or PHO447
Students will acquire the know-how of photographing natural and cultural aspects of landscapes and will develop a portfolio of digital photographs.
CVA365Media Strategies
3 credits
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the development of a marketing and communication plan. Planning, selection, and evaluation of all major mass media vehicles and the various decisions and problems that arise in those processes will be discussed and considered. In addition to gaining a broad knowledge of the various media techniques, patterns and the factors that influence the mass media decisions. The students will learn specifically the component of a media plan and the implementation of a media schedule.
CVA480Portfolio Design
3 credits
Preparation of a portfolio comprised of completed design projects: the evaluation and the demonstration of portfolio presentation methods based on the student’s specific area of study. This course is designed to help the student gather all previous projects together and prepare a creative design portfolio consisting of the projects developed in typography, design communication and all the essential courses taken. This course will educate students on how to create a living in the visual communication industry. Tips and lectures will be given to the students to make an impression with their work. Students will prepare their portfolio in the most creative way in order to face the industry with confidence.
CVA280Printing Techniques
3 credits
The “Printing” course consists of teaching the designers the way to create the best possible print production for their designs. It introduces almost all the necessary tools and techniques of print production and the how-to skills to create a correct pre-press PDF file ready-to-print.
CVA370Radio Spot
3 credits
This course aims to introduce students to the importance of audio in general and radio in particular as a communication tool for advertising. Designing a spot requires a choice between several concepts, voice-overs, music, editing, and all factors that make a successful radio campaign.
CVA475Seminar in Design
3 credits
The course is designed as a discussion of the major issues related to technology trends and change in communication. Students are expected to be able both to relate important information from the readings as well as offer their own interpretations of the ideas and issues discussed in class. Because of the uniqueness of some aspects of this topic, especially advances in global communications, the students will be required to think independently though still with a strong grounding in the relevant literature. To facilitate such discussion each session will be divided into three parts. First, discussion will center on the nature of the trend to be addressed that session. Students will gain an understanding of how that trend works and the breadth of its scope, and its effects on international brands. Second, discussion will turn to the assigned literature for that session to examine what students have to offer concerning that topic. Finally, students will discuss the prospects for international change in light of future developments in that trend.
AUV451Sound Design
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: TLV331 Or TLV431
The students will understand the various means of designing sound for film, using acquired techniques. The students will be able to integrate different sound tracks into a cohesive and well-balanced track.
CVA245Storyboard for Film
3 credits
Storyboards are a series of illustrations displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing an animated or live-action film. A storyboard is essentially a large comic of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help the directors and cinematographers visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Storyboard is the process of visual thinking and planning that allows a group of people to brainstorm together, fostering more ideas and generating consensus.
CVA355TV Idents Design
3 credits
In this course students will learn how to think creatively and execute corporate TV idents, in close relation with TV identity. This course is a combination of interaction between corporate identity, animation, editing, music and coloring.
DIM325User Interface Design
3 credits    |    Pre-requisite: DIM210
This course will help students to explore the basic guidelines of user interface design, while also learning the new and updated trends and principles of UI.
Capstone
CVA450Final Year Project
6 credits
The Final project is a semester-long endeavor in which each student develops graphic design work that materializes her/his exploration of a topic of interest. The topic is identified by each student through a project proposal submitted for review and approval by a pool of active instructors in the program. The topic can be triggered by a particular experience, text, artifact, etc., could bridge with tangential cultural practices (cinema, literature, music, theater etc.) and/or related fields of study (media and communications studies, art history and theory, cultural studies, visual culture, etc.). The investigation however, should have design/visual implications that enable it to critically inform and contribute to the student’s field of study in graphic design and to expand its margins within the purview of visual representation generally.

Mission

Due to the evolution of today’s technology, the communication and visual arts program enables students to understand that there is interdependence between advertising, branding, corporate design and technology fields. Since we are connected to the world around us like never before, students will explore the use of Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL), social media and sites as platforms to promote effectively any brand, in a very competitive and challenging environment, investigating recent methods, expending their eagerness to find creative and useful solutions in the future.

Program Educational Objectives

1. To learn how to use creativity to visualize, design and print and in TV commercials by using typography, photography, animation, editing and printing, in an artistic and esthetical environment.
2. To learn how to create solutions in a non-stop changing digital environment, to improve competitiveness, and to deal with the upcoming innovations.
3. Graduates will practice identifying the real needs of the market, either by developing and implementing new ideas, by creating start-ups, studios, production houses, agencies, etc. and/or by collaborating with already existing firms.

Student Learning Outcomes

a. Applying industry knowledge and esthetic and/or practical design to create, develop and implement effective visual communication solutions that meet professional standards;
b. Developing design thinking, ideation and copywriting;
c. Using technology and proficiency in production;
d. Learning critical thinking, presentation skills, about promoting projects and business ethics.
Holy Spirit University of Kaslik
Tel.: (+961) 9 600 000
Fax : (+961) 9 600 100
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