Master of Arts in Communication and Visual Arts
English
Courses
Common Core
ADI540Research Methodology in Design
3 credits
The objective of this course is to specify research methodologies in order to provide students with the knowledge to develop and analyze a research object, by examining several disciplinary fields and different approaches related to the nature of the specific research area and subject of study.
AGP503Online Advertising
3 credits
The advertising industry has experienced significant transformations in recent years as digital, social media and interactivity have changed the shape of media and advertising. This course will explore the effects and impact of digital media in advertising, how to understand users, and explore different modes of delivery for advertising and methods of audience measurement within an online, mobile and social media environment.
AGP510Graphic Design and Advertising Thesis
3 credits
Writing a thesis is essential for academic development and fulfillment. It is inconceivable that students would graduate without having written a solid, extensive and very critical academic work which would be compliant with international standards. The end result of the course will be a long paper on a topic related to their graduation field which would discuss a new angle for an established topic.
AGP601New Media
3 credits
The course will explore the implications of new media on culture, business and other major industries. The esthetic possibilities for a society invaded by social media, smart phones, video and digital cameras, computer interfaces, search engines, and video games will be analyzed and their convergence/divergence from “traditional” media. Through discussion, reading, screenings, and creative experiments, we will critically reflect on everyday new media practices, such as surfing, sharing, uploading, emerging technologies, and their historical origins to understand changing relations of the human- computer interaction (HCI).
Specialization
ARG504Typography in Motion
3 credits
With the advance of technology, hardware and software have become very powerful tools in the hands of designers, opening doors to higher levels of animations be it 2D or 3D. From opening sequences to film titles, to advertising, to music videos, to internet and different formats of online animations, movement found its way not only into images and shapes but into typography as well, transforming the otherwise printed, flat and static letter forms into a living being that mutates, morphs, float, and explodes.
ARG506Mobile Application Design
3 credits
With mobile apps revolutionizing the way we surf the internet and how and where information is received, this course will enable students to acquire the skills to build clean and attractive UI designs. Focusing on the design side of mobile applications, students will go through information that will assist them during the initial process in understanding developmental requirements and specifications.
ARG602BTL Design
3 credits
The Below The Line has always been an indistinguishable part of the experience of consumption, whether for luxury or mass consumption goods, or at supermarkets, duty free lounges or any other outlets.
ARG606Installation Art
3 credits
The purpose of this course is to teach the students how to explore new ways of artistic three-dimensional exploration through the conception and execution of an art installation based on their own experience of the imaginary.
PUB506Advanced English Copywriting
4 credits
Advanced techniques and applications of English copywriting, specifically in all advertising and communication forms and the best way to insure a catchy, readable and effective way of selling whatever the product or the social cause is.
Electives
ARG505Exhibition Display
3 credits
In this course the students will learn how to conceive a space exhibition for artists’ work, for writers, private collections, etc. They will also learn how to define a workspace to prepare a retrospective exhibition for a civilization, to know how to combine graphics and space, themes and communication, and all the necessary elements.
ARG605Art and Modernity
3 credits
Modernism came about through a series of political, social and historical shifts and inherently portrays them in its designs and visualizations. This course aims at giving the students the tools to decode such links and to be able to analyze them in perspective.
ARG607Thematic Illustration
3 credits
This course is designed to introduce students to the art of illustration. Sharing the tools and techniques of gallery artists and the communicative goals of graphic designers, illustrators work across media to make concepts understandable and powerful in the service of editorial, informational, political or persuasive goals.
ARG610Museography
3 credits
Through videos, slides, films and guided visits, the students will have a clear vision and will learn the history of museums, their conception, their evolution and how they can protect and save the human heritage. In a world where heritage, archiving and collective memory is mutating constantly, students learn about the presence of fixed parameters to record signifiers and ways of transmission.
ARG611Advanced Animation
3 credits
Students will be initiated into more complex techniques of animation with After Effects as their main tool, in order to create and deliver complete and advanced animation packages within time and budget constraints and according to specific themes and commissions.
ARG612Silkscreen
3 credits
A practical printmaking class where students will learn the entire process of silkscreen from stretching the screen to making a book. They will draw on their own creativity to discover new printmaking ideas. They can experiment with their own imagery, whether illustrative, type or photographic. Different techniques of the silkscreen process will be discussed. How students solve problems and deal with selecting the right separations will be an integral part of the course. Their ability to modify, collect and solve will be enhanced. The use of color and connections will also be stressed.
FLM537Screenwriting for Film and Television
3 credits
Through advanced problems in the field of screenwriting, students will acquire professional know-how in documentary and feature film writing, using discussions and exercises with an emphasis on research and preproduction.
FLM640Film and the other Arts
3 credits
Students will discuss in class issues related to films and other arts, plus weekly film screening. Studies in interrelationships between on the one hand film and on the other painting, dance and theater, through examination of such issues as the different modalities of presence in film and theater, the various functions of the frame in film and painting, the correspondence of the freezing that is part of the cinema apertures (frozen frames), and the diegetic freezing of the dancer. May be repeated twice for credit.
PUB604Media Strategy
3 credits
The advertising industry has undergone significant transformations in recent years as interactive and digital media have changed media and advertising. This course will explore the implications for media content, audiences, modes of media consumption and production, modes of delivery for advertising and methods of audience measurement within an online environment. Students will gain practical skills in how to use online environments for advertising, in how to target particular audiences and reach them with a wide variety of ads, and prompt them to act.
PUB608Propaganda and Critical Analysis
3 credits
Politics are very closely associated with campaigns, or how to best express the convictions of a political entity through messages which vary across countries, allies, enemies or culture and society. Students will be introduced to the concept of decision-making in a world full of rivalries, hostilities, ideas, budgets and wars. The role of propaganda will be scrutinized vis-à-vis its target audiences and how they pass overt and clandestine messages.
TLV560Digital Editing and Animation
3 credits
Instruction in creation, preparation and production of a complete original computer animation film, with emphasis on organization and operation of the postproduction process.
Capstone
ARG680AFinal Project I
6 credits
The final project is a semester-long endeavor in which each student develops a graphic design work that brings to life their exploration of a topic of interest.
Mission
The mission of this Master is to provide multidisciplinary training that begins with the study and collection of data and its analysis, then the market, the creative process, the realization of graphic design and advertising campaigns, to analyzing practical, social, financial, and cultural constraints for the purposes of coming up with the most compatible and cost-efficient solutions to the graphic, advertising and conceptual problem at hand. Online, print, BTL, and ATL, installation art and video are explored as media to best showcase the artistic and esthetic solutions proposed.
Program Educational Objectives
1. Learn the history of graphics and advertising, the rise of social media and the importance that design plays in the branding sector, providing the students with conceptual, historical and cultural landmarks.
2. Interpret abstract imagining concepts based on visual research and psychological/sociological fields. Understand how graphic, copywriting and/or the image works in real life situations and vary across cultures and contexts.
3. Demonstrate the ability to integrate and realize a design idea in several types of social media and in an increasingly multicultural world. Taking into account the role of the global economy and all the factors in countries with different cultures, while assessing semiotics and signifiers in the implementation.
Program Outcomes
a. Use a series of manuals and tools, on both intellectual and technical levels, to make creative, relevant, socially-compatible design executions.
b. Formulate and apply concepts in the professional field of advertising and graphic design through an adequate visual expression used in professional and social media online and in print.
c. Learn to analytically criticize their concept and that of others without prejudice and prior bias.
d. Show an understanding of the field of design: Above the Line and Below the Line (ATL and BTL) and the related fields of artistic professions and gain enough knowledge in order to avoid duplicating previous concepts/executions.