Course overview
This is a highly practical course, utilising methods through which illustration can be created and applied by challenging making and thinking. This approach enables you to become competitive, recognisable and adaptable.
You work on illustration practices, processes and outcomes, including commercial, editorial, authorial, sequential, multiform or active/participatory. You produce work for print and publishing, international competitions, children's picture books, zines, graphic novels, digital and screen-based production including animation, motion or large-scale installation.
You study at our School of Arts & Creative Industries, led by Teesside University and MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art), an international contemporary museum and gallery. You gain a full artistic experience, learning in a social space that inspires dynamic ideas, fuels collaboration and allows you to build local, national and international networks with industry professionals for your future illustration career.
Creative UK
Take advantage of our Creative UK membership and help futureproof your career, with networking events, a resource hub to support professional development, and bespoke workshops in partnership with industry leaders and mentors. Sign up for free student membership to get opportunities, events and newsletters sent directly to your inbox.
Association of Illustrators
We’re a member of the Association of Illustrators, giving you access to interactive talks, guidance on contracts and licensing, and your own discounted membership. This gives you the tools you need to forge a successful career in industry or as a freelancer.
Course details
Course structure
Core modules
Illustration for Communication
You refine your practical illustration and image-making. You focus on specialist techniques and develop your portfolio to reflect your creative direction and ambitions. You create work for real-world settings, responding to live briefs, competitions, client projects and promotional opportunities in industry. You engage with professionals, agencies, and organisations, gaining experience through collaboration and networking. You deepen your understanding of professional standards and ethics, bridging the gap between practical skills, industry application and theoretical insight.
Explore complex psychological theory and advanced clinical practice to work with service users at several conceptual levels and further develop and deepen your knowledge and understanding of advanced and specialised therapeutic approaches.
You prepare to work as an autonomous health professional and transition into qualified life. You learn about complex cultural and ethical dilemmas that arise throughout the course of your training and develop your understanding of the relationship between who you are and your role as a psychologist, recognising the impact of context and identity.
You undertake a major self-directed project that reflects your specialism and career ambitions across commercial, creative, industrial or research contexts. You take full responsibility for the concept, research and development, producing a significant outcome such as an artefact, exhibition, publication, campaign or digital work. You create a substantial body of work that demonstrates your vision and identity as a creative practitioner.
Speculative Illustration Practice
Explore speculative and critical approaches to illustration through research and experimental practice. You challenge conventions, combining traditional craft and drawing with emerging technologies in a post-digital context. You develop independent, sustainable methods of working while experimenting with tools, materials, and modes of production. You also investigate how to publish and share your visual work through alternative platforms, networks, and communities, from artisan editions to self-publishing.
You explore sequential illustration and image-making, creating narrative-based projects for a range of platforms and audiences. You experiment with storytelling through visual sequences, responding to texts, myths, data or your own original narratives. You consider commercial and self-authored applications, developing stories that inform, educate, or inspire. You investigate how your work can exist across formats such as print, digital environments, installations, and site-specific contexts, aligning your creative output with your research interests and professional direction.
Advanced practice
Undertake an opportunity that builds on your existing knowledge, skills, and experience and supports your future career interests and aspirations.
Learn how to develop solutions to real-world business problems and enhance your personal and professional knowledge, skills, and behaviours through reflection, critical thinking, and action.
Modules offered may vary.
How you learn
Research, theory and applied practice grounds your studies as you develop your own practice-based approach. Context of methodologies include individual, principles, research, historical or narrative. Whether you’re interested in creating a commercial body of work, an authorial-led practice or pushing territories of image-making, the course is uniquely structured to include space/s to enable, challenge and refine your practice.
How you are assessed
Various assessment methods are used throughout all of the modules and are specified in the module handbooks. These are primarily what we call in-course assessments, where you submit work during the delivery of the module, rather than sit timed examinations at the end. Arts modules are generally project based and primarily assessed through appraisal of a portfolio of work, often accompanied by a verbal presentation. Creative work is largely developmental and you are assessed on the process by which you achieve your solutions as well as the result, so it is essential that you provide clear evidence of your development work.
Entry requirements
You will normally have a first degree in related discipline (2.2 minimum) or relevant experience or equivalent qualifications.
You are expected to be a confident and independent learner with a good understanding of the design process, idea development and critical thinking. You are asked to present a portfolio of work or a completed project showing the development of your work from behind the scenes, or an ongoing project showing the progression and direction of your work.
In addition, international students will require IELTS 6.0 or equivalent.
For general information please see our overview of entry requirements
International applicants can find out what qualifications they need by visiting Your Country
Employability
Career opportunities
You could work as a freelancer or as an in-house studio illustrator across print, publishing or digital/screen.
You are taught by tutors with strong industry backgrounds and excellent networks. You have access to international artists and cutting-edge practice through MIMA’s visiting speaker programme. Recent speakers include Jimmy Turrell, Charli Vince, Nosy Crow publishing house and the contemporary studio Visual Editions. The course is also affiliated to the Association of Illustrators, providing access to their professional advice and content.
Information for international applicants
Qualifications
International applicants - find out what qualifications you need by selecting your country below.
Select your country:
Useful information
Visit our international pages for useful information for non-UK students and applicants.