MA Visual Communication
London, United Kingdom
MA
DURATION
1 year
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
19 Jan 2026*
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2026
TUITION FEES
GBP 38,650 **
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* as the RCA received a high number of applications we encourage you to apply as early as possible to secure your place on your programme
** overseas & EU | visit the RCA website to find out about fees for this programme as well as scholarship and funding opportunities
Key Summary
Join us online or in-person to find out about our postgraduate programmes in October-November. Events are hosted for Graduate Diploma, Master's and MPhil/PhD programmes..
At the heart of your experience with us in Visual Communication is the shared commitment to ‘conversational practice’. By this, we mean a practical and discursive approach to making. We see communication as essentially, a conversation to form bridges, connect people, and exchange ideas.
You will be joining our community of critical thinkers and makers, leading the way in social, cultural, and political practices. We have a long history of approaching the making of work through the collaborative, cooperative, and compassionate ethos of listening, respecting, and (un)learning. You will be introduced to a rich dialogic learning experience, where the conversation takes place between us, you, your peers, and your audiences. Together, through a discursive inquiry and exchange, we will explore what it means to both speak and listen.
Our students may come to Visual Communication from specific disciplines, such as Graphic Design and Illustration, but you will develop the critical and conceptual tools to enable communication and connections across disciplinary boundaries. Our interdisciplinary environment will offer you a comprehensive understanding drawn from diverse geographies, rich cultural contexts, and multiple intellectual and creative fields of study, enabling you to adapt to new subject areas and to situate your work in environments beyond the studio.
Meet the RCA
We host a range of online and on-campus open days as well as recruitment events in cities around the world. These events can include 1-to-1 meetings and portfolio advice, informal chats, presentations and sessions with staff, students and alumni.
Check the RCA event webpage for details of upcoming events, including events in India and the USA.
What will I learn?
You will become well-practised in interpreting ideas, events, complex data, knowledge and experiences, translating these into artefacts, narratives or connections that might manifest across or between the physical, digital or virtual. Through language, storytelling, tools & materiality you will learn to elicit new knowledge and in turn, create new insights. Your role as a communicator of such experiences is to form a bridge; to create forms of communication that can connect people and connect ideas. Referring to these exchanges as ‘conversations’ expands the possibilities for social accountability and creative consciousness.
As a student in the programme, you are given the creative agency to explore the ideas that drive your practice. Recent work has been as diverse as the body in digital space, the gentrification of communities, immigration rights, intangible cultural heritage, feminist and LGBTQ+ histories, media archaeology, the living archive, material labour, the privatisation of public space, protest, racial justice, visions of utopia and more.
Our open and inclusive vision of the practice of communication produces work that is every bit as divergent in form as in content, embracing multidisciplinary approaches including sound, type-design, performance, publishing, moving image, workshops, fieldwork, documentary, radio, virtual reality, comics, ceramics, happenings, drawing, walking and writing.
We invite you to join a conversation based on our shared belief in humankind and the power of art and design to empower and transform.
Programme structure
The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.
Term 1
In term 1, you will study the Encounters unit. Together we will develop ‘conversations’ within a critical framework that aims to question existing ideas and models of knowledge production. By staging encounters with other disciplines, communities, and sites, we will examine and expand on lived experience, motivation and practice. We will formulate inquiries that unsettle the familiar and ask — What if?
Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA, the College-wide unit.
Term 2
Following on from Encounters, you will begin testing the series of critical questions you’ve emerged within the unit Affinities. You will identify which discussions you want to participate in and practice listening and connecting with others on a non-individualistic level. You will start a dialogue with the people, objects and ideas you want to engage with and be expected to connect to them with care and purpose. You will consider new modes and methods relevant to your research, and focus on making, exchanging and experimenting with this knowledge by working collectively.
You'll also take the School-wide unit Making Worlds with Others. This unit Will allow you to work alongside students within and across the School. Working from the perspective of your individual practices and disciplines, you will develop a project that engages with others and/or creates mutual exchanges of ideas and understandings, with the intention to create critically engaged situations and/or outcomes resulting in convivial knowledge exchange. Through collaborative learning and making the unit will support you in understanding knowledge exchange and public engagement and how you are to situate your own practice in these territories. The unit will also ask you to question how socially engaged practice can contribute to cultural understanding, co-researching and co-creating methods for knowing with, and not knowing about.
Term 3
Independent Research Project. Here we ask you to focus on locating and establishing yourself and your work in the external contexts in which you seek to engage and connect your practice to emerging critical discourses. You will enact the critical frameworks, methods and tools you have developed through the programme.
The Royal College of Art has been ranked the number 1 university for art & design internationally for the 9th consecutive year, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023 – the largest world-wide survey of academic and industry opinion.
Burberry Design Scholarship
Scholarships are targeted to students enrolling on a number of RCA MA programmes to enable students to unlock their full potential regardless of their financial circumstances. Preference will be given to students from underrepresented communities.
Eligible Programmes: Print MA, Digital Direction MA, Visual Communication MA, Fashion MA, Textiles MA
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Full time, Students from under-represented communities
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: Up to seven full-fee tuition fee scholarships
House of Fraser Bursary
Supporting students in any MA programme from the UK (Preferably a Scottish national), experiencing financial hardship
Eligible Programmes: Architecture MA, Interior Design MA, City Design MA, Environmental Architecture MA, Ceramics & Glass MA, Contemporary Art Practice MA, Curating Contemporary Art MA, V&A/RCA History of Design MA, Jewellery & Metal MA, Painting MA, Photography MA, Print MA, Sculpture MA, Writing MA, Animation MA, Digital Direction MA, Information Experience Design MA, Visual Communication MA, Design Products MA, Fashion MA, Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, Intelligent Mobility MA, Service Design MA, Textiles MA
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Full time, Student preferably of Scottish origin
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: £10,000
Sir Frank Bowling Scholarships
The Scholarship supports 21 UK MA, MRes and PhD students every year from across all RCA MA, MRes and PhD disciplines.
Eligible Programmes: Architecture MA, Interior Design MA, City Design MA, Environmental Architecture MA, Architecture Pathway MRes RCA, Architecture MPhil/PhD, Ceramics & Glass MA, Contemporary Art Practice MA, Curating Contemporary Art MA, V&A/RCA History of Design MA, Jewellery & Metal MA, Painting MA, Photography MA, Print MA, Sculpture MA, Writing MA, Fine Arts & Humanities Pathway MRes RCA, Arts & Humanities MPhil/PhD, Animation MA, Digital Direction MA, Information Experience Design MA, Visual Communication MA, Communication Design Pathway MRes RCA, Communication MPhil/PhD, Design Products MA, Fashion MA, Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, Intelligent Mobility MA, Service Design MA, Textiles MA, Design Pathway MRes RCA, Design MPhil/PhD, Healthcare & Design MRes, Intelligent Mobility MPhil/PhD, Materials Science MPhil/PhD, Computer Science MPhil/PhD
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Students with Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage, or mixed Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: £21,000
The Tony Snowdon Scholarship
Applicants must make an application via the application portal on the Snowdon Trust website from Jan 2023: https://www.snowdontrust.org/scholarships
Eligible Programmes: Architecture MA, Interior Design MA, City Design MA, Environmental Architecture MA, Architecture Pathway MRes RCA, Ceramics & Glass MA, Contemporary Art Practice MA, Curating Contemporary Art MA, V&A/RCA History of Design MA, Jewellery & Metal MA, Painting MA, Photography MA, Print MA, Sculpture MA, Writing MA, Fine Arts & Humanities Pathway MRes RCA, Animation MA, Digital Direction MA, Information Experience Design MA, Visual Communication MA, Communication Design Pathway MRes RCA, Design Products MA, Fashion MA, Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, Intelligent Mobility MA, Service Design MA, Textiles MA, Design Pathway MRes RCA, Healthcare & Design MRes
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Students with a diagnosed physical or sensory disability
Eligible fee status: Any
Value: Up to £15,000 in tuition fees + £15,000 maintenance support
W H Smith Bursary
Supporting MA Visual Communication students from the UK, experiencing financial hardship
Eligible Programmes: Visual Communication MA
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Full time
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: £10,000