Art and Design

The general perception of art and design courses is of paint daubed haphazardly on canvas or incomprehensible installations dreamt up by students who will settle down eventually into doing something sensible, like accountancy or business management. In reality, you're taking early steps on a lifetime's journey that might include a career in fine art, graphics or textiles, or might just be a helping hand into a lifetime of art appreciation and personal pleasure.

Either way, you'll be entering a very broad church, with subjects ranging from the design disciplines (anything from craft-based courses such as furniture design to car design or multimedia work), to fine art (more traditional disciplines such as sculpture or performance or installation art) to the history and theory of art and design (museum studies or curatorship). For the curious mind, it's a goldmine.

For your study, youll choose between one of three broad areas: fine art (including painting, sculpture, photography and tapestry), visual communication and design (which can include graphics, animation, illustration) and the applied arts (fashion, furniture, jewellery design etc). Once on a course, you should find the facilities to back you in that specialisation, as well as the chance to dabble in other areas, cross-fertilising ideas. You will he expected to consider ideas as well as techniques, so you'll be learning to expand your imagination, just as much as developing your technical skills. You'll consider theory and study art in context, as well as carry on your practical work.

To do a degree in art and design, the chances arc that you will have to have foundation or diploma qualifications, which in turn usually means that you have to do a one-year course after school or college. So you've already shown more signs of commitment and hard work than the average undergraduate (and don't you hesitate to remind them when they claim you've spent all day playing with paint). A foundation year is also an excellent way for you to find out if art and design is really what you want before committing yourself to a further three years' work. Beavering away building up a portfolio and a collection of sketch books to show the art college at an interview is one thing. Doing nothing but art is quite another.

It may be true that the system doesn't guarantee that you'll make a living as a professional artist (and with around 4,000 fine arts students graduating each year, nor should it), but art and design will teach you a wide variety of skills that can be, and are, utilised in design and media companies, furniture and interior design, multimedia. And, of course, you'll feel qualified to be the loudest voice in the gallery.