Bachelor
If you're passionate about contemporary design opportunities and designing for a sustainable future, this degree will equip you with the creative and technical skills and insights to rise to future design challenges. It will prepare you for designing future products, services and systems in a creative and critical way. You will gain an understanding of design thinking techniques, how the world impacts design, and how design shapes the world around us.
In partnership with leading experts and industry, you will gain the skills to tackle real design challenges and devise leading-edge strategies and solutions. Advance your critical and strategic thinking and gain new perspectives on sustainability, while also learning to present your ideas clearly and powerfully.
MajorsVisual Communication Design
Explore many different forms of visual and graphic communication and branding, and understand the social contexts and environmental responsibilities of design. You'll learn to develop design solutions, which inform, persuade, provoke, or entertain your audience. You'll focus on your passion, but also learn how to effectively present and communicate your ideas within this evolving industry.
Interior and Spatial Design
The interior and spatial design major prepares students for a professional career across a broad spectrum of interior and spatial fields, including residential, commercial, exhibition, installation, theatre and event design.
The major prepares students to focus on diverse spaces and societies that creatively imagines interiors and public urban spaces in every domain and on every scale, from private to public, local to global. With an emphasis on social and environmental justice, designing for sustainability, liveability, diversity and inclusion are core to theory and practice. Students acquire a broad foundation of technical skills across a range of architectural and digital design programs, as well as engaging in theoretical knowledge, design process skills and analysis and critical thought. In the studios, students work on real projects preparing them for all interior and spatial design aspects inherent in professional practice.
Product Design
Can't wait to get your hands on a 3D printer? The equipment and technology you have the chance to use at Griffith is state-of-the art and this means there are very few limits to what you can create. Undertake a range of creative projects and put our technology to the test, using 3D printing, 3D modelling, 3D scanning, laser cutting and CNC routing equipment.
Immersive Design
If you can imagine it, you can design it! Harness the power of digital software to imagine, design, and construct 3D forms to create immersive experiences in in virtual environments. This technology is being applied to: visualise concepts and data across architecture, health and engineering; create reconstructions in the fields of archaeology and criminology; create virtual and augmented realities for use in gameplay and education.
Interaction Design
Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the interaction design major will develop your technical competency and digital creativity.
Study interactive design methods, electronic audio, visual media, computation and critical thinking. Combine these skills to produce imaginative concepts, functioning prototypes, digital audio-visual artefacts, and technically mediated interaction designs for everyday life.
Industry and expert connectionsWork on projects for real clients through our LiveWorm and LiveSpace work integrated learning studios. Take up exciting work placements to build your portfolio and cultivate important industry contacts and networks.
At Queensland College of Art (QCA) we maintain strong links with industry to ensure we develop degrees based on the latest market trends and employer demand. Our industry partnerships and collaborations unlock all kinds of opportunities for students studying at the QCA. Partnerships with large events such as Bleach* Festival, Botanica, and organisations such as Business South Bank offer unique learning experiences and connect you to industry while you're studying.
Graduate outcomesOur design graduates will have unprecedented opportunity to contribute and lead in vital new forms of social and economic development. Designers work across a range of fields roles, including interior design, product and service design and graphic design as well as interactive and 4D design. Our Bachelor of Design allows you to choose which area you would like to specialise in through a choice of five majors.
FlexibilityTailor your timetable - Even if you study full-time on-campus, you may still be able to customise your degree to suit your needs. From a range of tutorial times to online access to lectures and other course material, we're here to help you fit study in with your work and life commitments.
Global mobilityAn array of inspiring overseas study opportunities, ranging from a few weeks to a year, are available for students in this degree. Visit Go Global Griffith for more information
The University's Undergraduate Programs Admission Policy will apply.
Prior OP students: Applicants who graduated with an OP in or before 2019 can apply to Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) for an ATAR statement. For more information visit qcaa.qld.edu.au/senior/australian-tertiary-admission-rank-atar.
Effective from 2024Prerequisites
Assumed knowledge
Graduate prepared to join the ranks of adventurous designers changing the way we interact with our environment and enhancing the way we live. You'll gain the industry experience, networks and knowledge needed to succeed in cutting-edge design fields, opening opportunities for work in the fields of graphic design, interior design, product design, digital web design, design management, design education, film and television, theatre, furniture design, interaction design and immersive design and digital media.
Designers are needed in every organisation and in every industry. Organisations are recognising the value of integrating "design thinking" into their process and employ designers to help problem solve complex challenges in a constantly changing environment. You could be designing a new prototype for a clean energy company, an interior for a new housing typology, communicating information visually across a broad spectrum of media, or designing interactive and immersive experiences in simulated environments. This is a diverse career, which will be guided by your own interests and choice of major.
There is strong growth expected in the number of graphic and web designers and illustrators, according to the Australian Government's Job Outlook. It is a very large profession in Australia and there are expected to be 67,000 people working in this profession by 2023, with around 5,400 job openings each year.
The number of people working as Multimedia Designers (in their main job) has grown consistently, while the number of industrial designers is expected to remain stable with an anticipated 800 job openings each year. Many people in these industries work full time and unemployment is below average.
The number of people working as Interior Designers (in their main job) grew very strongly over 5 years: from 7,800 in 2014 to 9,200 in 2019. There are expected to be 10,900 people working in this profession by 2024.
Product Designer
Key employment sectors
Potential job outcomes
Commercial and industrial product development
Graphic and Web Designers and Illustrators
Key employment sectors
Potential job outcomes
Interior and Spatial Designer
Key employment sectors
Potential job outcomes
Immersive Designer
Key employment sectors
Potential job outcomes
Interaction Designer
Key employment sectors
Potential job outcomes
Griffith University grants credit and recognition of prior learning which may relate to prior formal learning or prior informal and non-formal learning. For more information, please visit the following website:
Griffith's innovative Credit Precedent Database allows you to find out what credit decisions have been made in the past. These precedents will give you an idea of what you can expect.
Selection for admission to an undergraduate degree is made on the basis of academic merit.
Selection for admission is competitive as the number of applicants generally exceeds the places available. The minimum requirement for eligibility for admission is completion of Year 12 of secondary school or equivalent academic achievement.
Prerequisites for admission may be specified in terms of levels of achievement in particular Year 12 subjects. Prerequisite conditions may be satisfied by other study or experience which is considered to be equivalent to the Year 12 prerequisites. More information is available on the Prerequisites and Assumed Knowledge website.
Further information for Queensland students completing an ATAR can be found here.
Domestic applicants should apply for admission through the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre (QTAC).
Domestic applicants from NSW and ACT should apply for admission through the Universities Admissions Centre (UAC).
A summary of the student profile for this program can be found on the QTAC website for Gold Coast | South Bank. The Rank profile is located on the Student Profile tab.