The BA (Hons) Visual communication course offers an accessible distance learning experience through which students are encouraged to develop a sense of visual enquiry, expand their horizons, and begin to find a personal creative voice within their practice. The course provides an interdisciplinary approach to study through which students can choose and explore a breadth of subjects, moving towards specialisms in graphic design, illustration or a combination of these subjects.

The Creative Arts Open Degree provides a unique opportunity for OCA students to fulfil their creative potential through studying two disciplines in depth to degree level. The development of a new level six programme for this degree gives a real opportunity to grow in its ability to merge two separate disciplines and create one final body of work, contextualise this work and develop an understanding of a professional practice.

A practical and contextual understanding of typography and type design is introduced at HE Level 4 and extended at Level 5 of this Graphic Design Open degree. Editorial design, infographics, wayfaring, branding, campaigning and identity design are introduced as specialist practices at Level 5. Students are encouraged to expand their definitions of graphic design through an exploration of contemporary practices and the relation to on-going developments in print, new media and other forms of communication.

The BA (Hons) Interior Design will encourage students to challenge and propose new and innovative occupations of space and will allow students the freedom to develop their own individual design identities, using digital and analogue software and techniques. The course will encourage students to creatively explore and challenge the notion of space and how it is used, whilst incrementally introducing them to the technical, practical and professional skills of interior design. Students will question both the physical and the invisible, initiate rigorous methods of the process led to research and experimentation, as the foundation of imaginative and well-realised designs.

The OCA BA (Hons) Creative Writing degree programme is sensitive to the fact that students will be enrolling at different levels of writing expertise. Some will be novices for whom this is a first serious foray into creative writing and want to become a writer of published works; others may already have a portfolio of published work behind them. Whatever they bring with them to their degree, studying through OCA will provide a structured and supportive context within which they may foster their formation as writers and gain educational validation for their work.