Visual Communication

The people who work in the graphic and visual communication professions are graphic artists or graphic designers. They produce a message using physical or digital media, to reach a public made up of individuals, citizens or consumers but it also exists in the form of graphic authorship.

Visual Communication professions

The graphic artist or graphic designer has to master a certain number of communication skills.  With good listening, analysis and synthesis skills, he must be able to convey his intentions to the sponsor before putting them into action.  

He must also regularly present his investigations to allow for the communication back and forth that will engage the players in the same project.  This relationship game between “sponsor(s)” and himself and/or with a work team, must be a priority and must not function without thinking about the audience involved (an audience of citizens or consumers), the objective that must be achieved, because it is indeed a three-party relationship (sponsor-graphic artist-audience) that is concerned here.  Even if the target audience is not present during the meetings, it is for them that the act of visual communication is created, that it is made visible, that we communicate...

He intervenes in the creation of logos and visual brand identities, putting together posters, packaging, product identities, signs, and many other forms of support because he must be a source of advice and proposals.  The graphic artist must be able to respond to all requests, using artistic means as varied and diverse as possible, but he must also acquire some technical skills.   He is attentive to creation, to means of expression, to new techniques and technologies, to culture in all its forms.

Being a Visual Communication student

It is this expertise, this attention to detail and the sense of excellence, this technical and artistic mastery, as well as the mastery of management and communication tools that the Graphic and Visual Communication student must learn to use and manage in the Master’s degree.  

From the 1st year of Bachelor studies, the “permanent ping-pong” between students and teachers, that recalls the communication between sponsor and creator, is a necessity to allow the progress and follow-up of projects and to allow assistance and development for the students with a maximum of methodology and efficiency but also to allow them to acquire their own autonomy (end of year 3 of the Bachelor studies).  

In workshop practice, the thought process must precede the execution, the analysis is a necessity before picking up tools like the pencil or the marker to scribble some graphic solutions.

Latest news of our students

1st prize for the poster BAVAR (Libraries of Villeneuve d’Ascq) > Theme: tomorrow’s town
Logo et Signage - Association Internationale de Pédagogie Universitaire A.I.P.U.
“Œillade typographique”, workshop exhibition at the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image Imprimée of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (in the context of the ‘Shakespeare à la folie’ - International Posters)
Logo and production of the BAVAR identity
Digital Images competition La Louvière.
Signage, scenography and participation in the exhibition “LOINTAIN de PRÈS”, Iranian and Belgian graphic art (Maison de la Culture de Tournai).
Logo for the Conseil Consultatif des Ainés tournaisiens.
Participation in the Triennial of Political Posters in Mons.
Signage, personalised communication materials, Office du Tourisme Tournaisien (Graphics and service design)
Naming, logo & identity FACILIYO
Naming, logo & identity Terrovivo
Logo Aqua Indus Technlogy (AIT)
Logo Atelier DOME
Logo SGT Eoliennes + branding Eoliennes
Creation of pictograms for the le CHwapi as well as for 5 hospitals in the Walloon region and Brussels

What happened to them?

Graphic artist at Casamance & Camengo(F)
Designer & Project Manager at Prestimedia (F)
Graphic artist at Carodel (B)
Graphic artist at Immobox (B)
Web developer at talentplug (F)
Creative director at Ginkolea (F- Marseille)
Graphic artist at Sobecom’ (B)
Graphic designer at Convergence Point (Brussels)
Etc.  Others have become Freelance Graphic Designers...

Publications:

“le Lointain de Près”, Mayak editions
“Esprit d’atelier 1”, student projects from the workshop.

What is graphic art?  

Graphic art is an answer given to a question asked.  Graphic communication is the subject of a drawing study based on a communication project (design).  Drawing and design are both components of graphic design. They start from an intention.  

Graphic authorship, a transgression towards art (sliding from using the know-how for a sponsor towards the “artistic field”). Questioning the boundaries of the discipline.  

Vincent Taforeau – head of the workshop.  2012 Notes