Diploma of Design

This unit is designed to help you make the most of your time at Deakin. It aims to empower you to make informed decisions about course pathways and career strategies that can support your personal values and professional aspirations, build your industry contacts and peer networks, and help you achieve the impact you want to make in the world – no matter where you currently are in your career journey. You will discover approaches that can help you set your goals for the future and identify the skills you will need to get there. In the process, you will learn how internships and other forms of experiential learning and community engagement can allow you to apply the concepts and principles from your studies to your professional and creative practice, helping to develop your discipline-specific expertise and employability skills as well as your sense of purpose and professional identity. You will also be introduced to digital tools that can help you evidence your personal and professional competencies and craft a compelling narrative about the contributions you want to make to the communities in which you live and work.

This unit will investigate ‘design thinking’ as a strategic methodology and problem solving process. Taking a multi-discipline, interdisciplinary approach, students will be required to use ‘design thinking’ as a problem solving process. ‘Design thinking’ methods will require students to adopt a human-centred approach to innovation that draws on their skills to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements of business and society as a whole. Students will work individually and in workshop teams, the final assessments will be a combination of research and practice outcomes. Students will use ‘Design thinking’ methods to address a ‘wicked problem’.

This unit introduces students to the digital tools necessary for visual communication design through a combination of practical skills and theory exploring the design elements and principles. Students will be introduced to the Adobe imaging suite. Consideration will be given to the theoretical concepts and implications of digital technology as they relate to art and design processes. Techniques include digital mark making, graphic illustration, design elements and principles, creative thinking and layout explored through practical projects.

Typography is an essential component of communication and this unit explores the theory and application of forms and structures of typography including the anatomy and applications of type and font families across print, digital and web applications. This unit will address and engage with the impact and implications of selecting and applying typography to a variety of design scenarios in historical and a multifaceted contemporary setting. This unit introduces and reinforces industry-standard typography practices for both print and screen-based environments. Student creative thinking ideation and project strategies for design briefs are developed to enable the advancement of information technology skills, design thinking and design construction methods. This unit engages self-directed learning in conjunction with a focus on attention to discipline specific scholarly research, conceptual analysis, and global industry practice.

Learn the fundamental principles and practices of interaction design. This includes how to develop and design an industry-based design concept for a diverse range of audience interactions. In this unit students are introduced to the fundamental components of interaction design through a series of critical practical design tasks.

In this unit, we will explore the fundamental design practices, and techniques of user experience design. Emergent technologies have a profound impact on practices of reading and consuming all digital media and this unit will introduce UX for software, and digital applications to leverage emergent technologies, consumer electronics and/or mobile devices. This will be negotiated through usability study testing, communication design, content strategy, research, and practical exercises. This unit is geared towards developing the cornerstones of production for design strategies and processes that capitalise on new developments for students who desire an understanding of UX. This includes digital project management practices, usability, collaborative tools content strategy, wire framing, prototyping, visual design comps, and working with the Adobe CC.

This unit explores digital video camera operation and handling manual and automatic control of exposure and focus. The unit also focuses on shot framing and composition, camera movement, preparing to shoot. It includes topics on shooting techniques, visual language, cinematography and style the role of the cinematographer. It introduces students to concepts of recording and working with audio in digital videobasic editing techniques.

The unit will introduce key aspects of the history and development of film, its language, style and genres, through a survey of seminal works and influential movements and genres. This includes: Early Cinema, German Expressionism, Surrealism, Film Noir, Experimental film, French New Wave, Hong Kong Cinema, American and Italian Westerns, and Horror cinema.

This unit is an introduction to the practice and theory of multimedia journalism. It sets the social, professional and legal context for journalism practice, and introduces students to the convention of news writing and reporting stories. Students will also focus on combining text with photos and audio clips to produce news stories; critically examining their own production processes, and learn to report multimedia news stories to a deadline.

This unit in the practice and theory of multimedia journalism focuses on news reporting processes. It outlines professional, social and legal factors that impact on reporting of local, regional an national news. The unit introduces students to key news beats, including reporting stories about politics, business, sport and local newsworthy events and issues. Students will build contacts in their preferred news beat/s and engage with social media tools to report and produce their news stories. They will also gain skills in reporting a news story (to a deadline) for broadcast and online media platforms.

The unit provides an introduction to the field of public relations. Students learn about what public relations people do, and how they do it. Topics include planning, media relations, employee relations, community relations, international public relations, ethics and public relations law.

This unit sits at the nexus of theory and practice to help you understand the role of strategic communication in organisational contexts. Put simply, strategic communication refers to the ability to develop and disseminate messages that achieve specific and measurable objectives. Whether that objective is to inform, change opinion or adapt behaviour, successful strategic communication revolves around people.

This unit will introduce students to the theory and practice of contemporary advertising by exploring the industry’s history and rapidly changing nature in the digital era. The social, ethical and regulatory contexts of advertising are established to encourage students to become reflective future producers or consumers of advertising messages. The strategic imperatives of advertising and notions of effectiveness are examined to build students’ abilities to solve communication problems that are commonly faced by private, public and non-for-profit sector clients.

Students will explore the nexus of creativity and strategy that is fundamental to successful brand communication. They will examine the nature of creativity in the communication industry and practitioner approaches to the creative process. The advertising messages produced by international brands will be analysed to help students prepare for global mobility as future practitioners. Students will be introduced to the key creative roles within communication companies and build the research, planning and ideation skills required of contemporary practitioners.

This unit enables students to explore and experience present day digital media culture in critical and creative ways. The unit is built on multi-platformed content, delivery and assessment, providing a user-friendly engagement with social media that facilitates practical, hands-on work in micro-blogging, blogging and podcasting. Creating and sharing different forms of media content, students learn how to communicate across different online platforms as part of a highly interactive community. Highlighting the benefits of media-making for personal and professional use, the unit allows students to develop their portfolios and discover how to use social media to strategically build a dynamic online identity.

This unit enables students to critically and creatively engage with present day digital media culture, with a particular emphasis on making videos. Highlighting the crucial importance of creating audio-visual content for different purposes and audiences, the unit guides students through various video-making practices and strategies. Emphasising the benefits of making videos in a wide range of industry settings, the unit allows students to develop their portfolios and learn how to use video to strategically build a dynamic online identity.

Discover the complex, competing and intersecting linkages between the different communications disciplines. Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Communication in Everyday Life explores the power of media in shaping publics and public interests, and the opportunities and challenges created in the network society. You will explore the rise of mass society and consumption, the convergence of media, the ongoing fragmentation of audiences and the changing political economy of the communications industries. Along the way, you will investigate and the analyse core concepts, themes, theories and methods that will enable you to navigate the communication disciplines.

This unit introduces ideas and processes associated with digital photography.The construction and manipulation of photographic images is creatively and critically explored through a variety of conceptual frameworks. Workflow techniques include the fundamentals of using Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras, colour management, RAW image processing, scanning, photo compositing in Photoshop, and the production of exhibition quality prints. Assignments and lectures provide students with an overview the medium’s history and contemporary issues.

In this unit students explore the making of animation through a range of techniques, methods and approaches for a variety of animation practices. Students will study established principles of 2D animation (Timing, Squash and Stretch, Staging, etc.) and story-telling, learn under-camera techniques (time-lapse and stop-motion), and develop basic project management skills to take an idea from storyboard to animated short film. The unit allows students to focus on specific interests, such as experimental non-narrative, or character and story-based animation.

Students will explore aspects of animation design through the creation of virtual objects and animated environments in this introductory 3D computer animation unit. Consideration will be given to how these elements can express a meaningful visual experience as students consider form, visual identity, aesthetics, and layout. Students gain a solid understanding of 3D techniques in modelling, texturing, animation, lighting, composition and rendering.

This unit introduces students to the fundamentals of scriptwriting with a focus on story-telling strategies for a global context. Scriptwriting elements covered include structure, plot, turning points, character, dialogue, scenes, setting, and subtext. Students will learn how these elements may be used to maximum creative advantage within divergent scriptwriting forms. Screen, stage, sound, gaming, and hybrid performance environments make different demands on the writer’s craft. Consequently, the unit encourages writers to embrace a flexible definition of scripts and of their relationship to broader mechanisms of production and performance. The notion of writing constraints as a way to unlock creativity is an important thread within the unit. The unit’s focus on global story-telling strategies reflects the increasing significance of international co-productions and cross-cultural audiences to the careers of twenty-first century scriptwriters. Intensive workshopping ensures the acquisition of the collaborative and audience awareness skills essential to allow students to undertake the scriptwriting roles of the future.

This unit introduces students to the various ways in which we think about and respond to crime and its control. It introduces some of the key frameworks for understanding and explaining crime and examines some of the main types of crime. Examples include crimes between persons, groups and organisations, and crimes at local, national and international levels. The unit also provides a foundation for future study in criminology subjects.

This unit provides an introduction to the structures and procedures of the criminal justice system from a critical perspective. The unit outlines the major characteristics of the investigation, prosecution, adjudication and correctional processes within the criminal justice system, and the key issues which impinge on contemporary criminal justice administration in Australia. The conduct of police investigations, prosecutorial decision-making and the executive administration of the prison system are explored. The unit adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the study of criminal justice institutions and practices, and critically assesses the effectiveness of the system using contemporary criminological/socio-legal evidence.

This module’s learning and assessment activities provide students with guidance on what constitutes academic integrity. It will allow students to develop knowledge, skills and good practice principles to avoid plagiarism and collusion and thereby maintain academic integrity.

This module is designed to provide international students with opportunities to review, develop and practice the English language systems and skills required to successfully participate in an undergraduate degree program. It is compulsory for international students only and consists of a mandatory 2-hour on-campus class per week for the duration of the first trimester.

Some international students are exempt from this module. For exemptions, visit our English language entry requirements page.