Diploma in Visual Arts and Design

Follow your passion and explore a broad-based visual arts and design program that integrates studio-based art, graphic design and the history and theory of art and design, combined with relevant communication and industry skills. You gain the knowledge and skills to prepare you for a career in the creative industries, and the course can be used as a pathway into the Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design degree or as a starting point into teaching.

To qualify for the diploma, a student completes 80 credit points over one year full-time or equivalent part-time: 70 credit points of specified units and 10 credit points of elective units from the Bachelor of Arts. Specified units include Drawing, Ceramics/Multimedia, Painting, Art in the Early 20th Century, Graphic Design Thinking and Design for Publication, alongside ACU Core Curriculum units. Core curriculum units may be studied in professional terms, subject to availability. It is an AQF Level 5 qualification offered at ACU's Melbourne and Strathfield campuses.

The Diploma in Visual Arts and Design is also available as a UniAccess-International program, offered on a fee-paying basis to international students, which gives students from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to study a selection of units of interest to them in a program that offers a pathway to a relevant bachelor degree. A UniAccess-International student who successfully completes eight units specified by a UniAccess program may either leave with the diploma qualification or continue their studies with a place in the Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design course; domestic students are also able to use the diploma as a pathway into that degree.