BA (Hons) Design for Publishing

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BA (Hons) Design for Publishing

Our BA (Hons) Design for Publishing degree covers creating effective design for printed books, newspapers and magazines as well as digital apps and online publications

You will explore how words and images can come to life on the page and screen to tell stories and to deliver information. Our highly regarded course will nurture your love of type, typography, typefaces, image creation and art direction.

You will use industry-standard software to explore a broad range of editorial design approaches from storytelling with text and images to mastering typography, book binding and specialist print finishing, to complex data visualisation and infographics.

Professional preparation

You will work on projects set by our many partners from industry and have a chance to work on competition entries and live briefs set by professionals. There will be opportunities to pitch your work to visiting speakers and hear their feedback on your ideas and approach.

Industry links

You will be taught by passionate and experienced tutors, as well as many visiting professional designers, whose reputation for nurturing talent means that leading design groups and agencies actively recruit graduates from the course.

Prepare for a design career

Our course has a strong reputation with the publishing industry thanks to the calibre of our graduates.

And the course has a long history of student success in national and international design competitions, including:

The British Book Design Production Awards
The Society of Publication Designers’ Student Design competition
International Society of Typographic Designers competition.

Influential professional designers – including David Pearson (Type as Image), Rick Banks (Face37) and Hannah Little (Little, Brown Book Group) inform course content, contribute to the TALK lecture series and set live practical projects.

Typical career paths include:

Magazine Designer
Book Jacket Designer
Graphic Designer
Editorial Designer
Newspaper Designer
Publishing Designer

Digital Publisher
Creative Director
Interface Designer
Copywriter Printmaker/Printer

You’ll also get specialist creative careers advice from our Business and Employability Team to help support you as you plan your career.

Recent awards:

Four student winners in Society of Publication Designers Awards 2022

Stefan Sagmeister visits Norwich University of the Arts

Course information

Institution code: N39
Course 3 Year UCAS code: W2AD
Course 4 Year UCAS code: W212
Course length: 3 or 4 year options
Sandwich courses: Creative Professional Development (1 year, Level 5 diploma), or Creative Computing (1 year, Level 5 diploma), available between years 2 & 3

All courses run as a blend of on-campus and digital teaching and learning, and follow current UK government safety advice. Applicants and students will be notified directly if any changes need to be made.

Course specifications
Three year degree
Four year degree
Course related costs

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Course content

Year 1
Have your preconceptions challenged by projects that inspire you towards creative and bold new ideas
Develop key technical skills in various design-related digital media such as InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator
Develop skills in typography, printing, layout, photography, research skills, idea generation, visual narrative and story-telling
Develop skills in designing solutions to present complex data and information through editorial design and infographics
Explore print, paper, material, format and hand-craft/making skills.

Year 2
Focus on typographic detail, layout, and structure, readability, simplification of complex information and its effective communication
Explore editorial design, type for screen and digital environments, book binding, folding and experimental formats, specialist print finishing, newspaper design, book cover design, exhibition and spatial design, sound and motion design, art direction, visual journalism, user interface design, large-scale design, experimental image making, complex data visualisation, typeface design, type as image and creative writing
Understand storytelling through text and image
Explore working in a team and developing a creative role through course and university-wide collaborative projects.

Year 3
Enhance your creative thinking and problem solving to demonstrate mastery of typographic principles, experimental image use, art direction, dynamic use of composition and narrative based storytelling
Consolidate your understanding of print, digital design as well as exhibition, immersive/experience design and large-scale graphics
Create a professional portfolio of work - in multiple formats including physical and online - directed by your specific discipline interests
Respond to competition briefs and other professionally-focused projects
Complete a Research Report that provides broad contextualisation to your practice.

Student work

Tap to expand

Fever Magazine - Editorial spread for 'Fever Magazine' by BA Design for Publishing student Callan Norton. Creative typography and 3d glowing shapes on a blue and pink background, simulating a night sky, interacting with juxtaposed typography

The Last Pandemic - Book jacket design for 'The Last Pandemic' by BA Design for Publishing student Dan Ayris. A black book jacket, with bold, large, luminous green typography repeating 'TNP over and over. The luminous green type suggests 'virus'.

The Last Pandemic - Book design for 'The Last Pandemic' by BA Design for Publishing student Dan Ayris. A mockup of an open book shows a white page on the left, and a luminous green page on the right. The book is laid out like a textbook, providing information on viruses and pandemics.

Ellie Hawes - Illustration by BA Design for Publishing student Ellie Hawes. A digital, flat colour illustration using blue, pink and black colours and tints. Depicting a mountainous landscape juxtaposed with a cityscape

Wonka Chocolate - Packaging concept for Wonka chocolate by BA Design for Publishing student Ellie Hawes. Illustrations of a variety of people all surrounding and looking at a Wonka chocolate bar.

A Seat at the Table - Book cover design for 'A Seat at the Table: Women on the frontline of music' by BA Design for Publishing student Louise Aspinall. The front cover is neon pink, with the back cover a bright yellow. On the cover is a photograph of an unravelled cassette tape, and hand drawn typography surrounds it.

BA Fine Art catalogue - Editorial design for the BA Fine Art catalogue, by BA Design for Publishing student Ollie Turner. A blue cover is filled with black typography, a mixture of sans serif and hand drawn typography. A large pink 2020 is behind all the black typography.

Skate News - A modern newspaper design for 'Skate News' by BA Design for Publishing student Ollie Turner. Black and white images alongside creative typography.

Spectrum - Editorial design concept called 'Spectrum' by BA Design for Publishing student Toby McLaren. Typographic layouts on see through paper.

Aballone - Aballone magazine, designed and launched by BA Design for Publishing students Toby McLaren and Hannah Roadknight. A magazine laid on a pink background. A mountainscape is on the front cover, with the word 'Aballone'. On top of the magazine is an iPhone open on the Aballone instagram feed.

Aballone - Editorial design for Aballone magazine by BA Design for Publishing students Toby McLaren and Hannah Roadknight. A mockup of the open magazine showing a floral green, pink, white and grey digital illustration and text

Atlas - Magazine cover design for 'Atlas' by BA Design for Publishing student Jana Giles. An abstract photo of water and earth meeting, with 'Atlas' written in white.

Atlas - Editorial layout by BA Design for Publishing student Jana Giles. Creative black typography depicting the word 'Sand' as if it was moving

Alicia Mundy - 4 monochrome panels side by side. the illustrated environments on each line up to create one skyline

Alicia Mundy, Matthew Goss, Julia Clark -

Carmen Rodriguez-Balit - Book cover with a mans face in negative print, one half is overlaid with an xray style over exposure of the same image, the text on the front reads 'in cold blood' in different pieces of newspaper headlines for each word

Susanna Ward - Image of a publication and app designed by Design for Publishing student Susannah Ward

Emily Beavis - Fine print on thin paper which has been crumpled in the middle

Emily Beavis - A thread bound book with thin plywood covers, and mandala pattern burnt into the cover

Emily Beavis, Juliette Briggs, Leanne Butterworth, Carmen Rodriguez-Balit - a yellow disk with various scattered objects in front of a pink wall. a pair of legs rises from behind the yellow desk, with fishnet socks

Hope Brooks - Collage of a woman's head cut in half and in place an abstract sketch

Joyce Pfeiffer - Disjointed and fragmented vertical text reads MADE IN SWITZ-ER-LAND

Krystal Loh - two images side by side show glasses of milk on pastel backgrounds. the left has white milk with a pale blue background and a light pink top. The right image has pale blue milk, with a pale blue top, and a light pink background..

Krystal Loh - Cross stitched text reads Stitch and bitch

Krystal Loh - side by side panels with vertical text, reading LONDON TOKYO NEW YORK, the text is so large that it is cut off by the edge of the panels, and the type is in the style of each city respectively

Krystal Loh - Double page spreads of a book with abstract type

Matthew Goss - Large grey photo which looks like an aerial photo of snowy terrain, with a small block of text in a narrow column bottom right

Matthew Goss - SIGHTS AND SOUNDS a visual story of stones throw records an exhibition lot 613

Natalie Sowa - Side by side images with black and grey photos with white borders, the left has green abstract watercolour embellishment and the right has blue

Natalie Sowa - red squares on a blue background, text reads NYTNH OBAMA

Natalie Sowa - double page spread on a blue background, with Vladimir Putin on the left and Barack Obama on the right. each stands in front of their countries flag

Nicole Mitchell - White geometric line drawings on a blue background showing 3 ways of making coffee

Philippa Nash - Abstract letterforms for numbers from 0-9 in white on yellow with cyan and magenta blocks

Sean Ross - yellow all caps sans serif type reads RAG-NAR

Sophie Moates - A long straight road through an american desert, the road ends in the mouth of a woman's head which has been overlaid on the horizon

Thomas Lynes - 3 screens of a published series on a mobile device. the text is fragmented with an abstract layout in white on blue

Visit the Degree Show website

Entry requirements
Portfolio guidance
Fees & funding
Level 5 Diplomas
Four year degree

Typical UK offers

A / AS Levels – GCE
GCE A/AS Levels 3 A-level qualifications at grades BBB. Where candidates are not taking 3 A-levels, NUA will consider combinations of A-level/AS-level and other Level 3 qualifications.

BTEC Extended Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction, Merit, Merit in an art, design or media related subject

BTEC Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction*, Distinction* in an art, design or media related subject

T Levels
A T Level in any subject with overall grade Merit or above

UAL Extended Diploma
Merit

UAL Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Merit

UAL Level 4 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Pass

Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Merit

Access to Higher Education Diploma (Art and Design)
Pass

International Baccalaureate Diploma
A minimum of 27 points

NUA welcomes applicants of all ages from all backgrounds. Your application will be primarily assessed through your portfolio, responses to questions asked and personal statement, so even if you have no formal qualifications or do not meet our typical offers it can still be worth applying.

If you are studying at the time of your application and your application is successful it is likely that you will receive a conditional offer.

If the qualification that you are studying is not shown, do not worry as we are able to accept other pre-entry qualifications as well as combinations of different qualifications. Please do contact our Student Recruitment Team if you have any queries.

International applications

We accept qualifications from all over the world. To find our entry requirements from a specific country, please check our dedicated international pages.

Most international students are required to hold an English language qualification. Applicants are required to have a minimum UKVI approved IELTS exam score of 6.0 overall, with a minimum of 5.5 in each section. Equivalent English language qualifications are acceptable such as, IB English language syllabus A or B/English Literature (Grade 4).

We also accept some alternative English qualifications. Learn more about our English entry requirements.

You can email us on international@nua.ac.uk if you’d like to discuss your application individually.

BA (Hons) Design For Publishing degree portfolio guidance

We are calling the traditional portfolio a ‘development portfolio’. This is to emphasise that what we would like to see is where you are now in your creative journey. You don’t need to spend a long time making the perfect work, as we can assess your potential from your work in progress. Your development is the most important part of your learning.

Your development portfolio should be relevant to this course, but you can include a wide range of work that shows your creativity, technical competence and understanding of communication.

You may wish to include some of the following:

Editorial work and page layout
Book and magazine design
Typography
Photography and art direction
Illustration
Work created using Adobe Creative Suite or other appropriate design software
Spatial and environmental graphics
Digital & screen design
Drawing Skills
Print making
Book binding
Suggestions for context: books magazines, journals, newspapers, websites

Further portfolio advice and tips

Get more advice on presentation formats, layouts and when to submit your development portfolio in the application process.

2023/24 University fees for new entrants

NUA will assess students’ tuition fee status using the guidance provided by the UK Council for International Student Affairs

Students from the UK or Ireland and EU students with ‘Settled’ or ‘Pre-Settled’ status will be charged ‘Home’ fees if they meet the relevant residency requirements. They will usually be eligible for a tuition fee loan from the UK government, meaning that they won’t have to pay NUA’s tuition fees upfront.

Students who do not meet the necessary residency requirements will usually be charged ‘Overseas’ fees and will not be eligible for the UK government tuition fee loan. Since 2021/22, this includes new entrants from the EU, EEA, and Switzerland who do not have ‘Settled’ or ‘Pre-Settled’ status, because the UK has now formally left the EU.

Fee status	Course	Annual fee
Home	Undergraduate degree (full-time three and four year degree)	£9,250
Overseas	Undergraduate degree (full-time three and four year degree)	£18,000

For Home undergraduate students starting in 2023, inflation may be applied to your fees in later years, if the UK government were to increase the fee cap beyond the current limit of £9,250 per year. If such an increase were to apply, we would confirm this in advance to you of each academic year, and we would limit the increase to the maximum allowed by the Office for Students.

For Overseas undergraduate students starting in 2023, inflation will be applied to your fees in later years. We will confirm this in advance to you of each academic year, and we will limit the increase to no more than the Office for Students’ recommended inflationary measure, which is RPI-X. RPI-X is calculated by the Office for Budget Responsibility. In setting fees for the following year, we will use the Office for Budget Responsibility’s RPI-X forecast for quarter 3 of the relevant year.

See our Fees and Funding page for further information which is also available in a downloadable format.

Financial support for UK students in 2023

Tuition fee loans and loans for living costs are usually available to UK and some EU students, as well as non-repayable NUA bursaries based on family income. Find out more about applying for funding.

All students have an opportunity to spend a year, between the second and third year of their course, enhancing their employability options through a Level 5 Diploma.

These courses are offered in Creative Professional Development; a structured programme of input sessions and work-based learning, and Creative Computing; designed to build the foundation skills in coding and software design that are in high demand in the digital and creative industries.

Four year degree – BA (Hons) Design for Publishing

Four year degrees offer students a chance to build on their experience within their undergraduate course of choice.

Year 0 will help to build confidence and develop subject specific practical, creative and conceptual skills – making full use of University studios and workshops.

Typical UK offers and entry requirements for Year 0 entry

GCE A/AS Levels
2 A-level qualifications at grades CC or higher.

BTEC Extended Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Merit, Merit, Pass in an art, design or media related subject

BTEC Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction, Merit in an art, design or media related subject

T Levels
Pass (D or E on the core)

UAL Extended Diploma
An overall Pass

UAL Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
An overall Pass

Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Pass

Access to Higher Education Diploma (Art and Design)
Pass

International Baccalaureate Diploma
A minimum of 24 points

If you are studying at the time of your application and your application is successful it is likely that you will receive a conditional offer.

Find out more

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