Illustration BA and Illustration (Top-Up) BA Welcome Pack
Welcome to Illustration BA and Illustration (Top-Up) BA 2025.
Hello, and a warm welcome! We’re excited to meet you in person during Welcome Week, which begins on Monday, 22 September at 10am.
You’re joining a vibrant course at a supportive, future-focused University that’s committed to helping you develop the skills needed to thrive in the creative industries. We’ve recently refined the course to better reflect the evolving expectations of the creative industries, ensuring your degree is both relevant and highly valued by employers. You’ll also benefit from shared learning experiences with Graphic Design students, giving you a broad creative foundation and the chance to work in a dynamic, cross-disciplinary environment – just like in real-world design studios.
Our Illustration course takes an expanded approach, placing storytelling at the heart of what we do. Over the next three years, you’ll explore diverse ways of communicating ideas – whether to inform, persuade, entertain, or inspire. Through research, experimentation, and purposeful play, you’ll develop your own creative voice. You’ll also gain hands-on experience with a wide range of media, software, and workshop tools to support your individual approach to problem-solving and image-making.
We’re passionate about providing rich, real-world experiences and meaningful challenges. Working alongside fellow students, lecturers, and industry professionals in our studio spaces, you’ll grow your creativity, collaborate on exciting projects, and explore what illustration means to you – and to the audiences you’ll reach. We can’t wait to see what you’ll create.
Your Course Leader
Zoe Taylor
Senior Lecturer in Illustration
zoe.taylor@northampton.ac.uk
Welcome and Induction sessions
This is your induction timetable with an in-person studio session starting on Monday 22 September. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Zoe on Zoe.Taylor@northampton.ac.uk
Monday 22 September – Friday 3 October
Welcome Week activities
From karaoke to outdoor cinema, wellbeing walks to Silent Disco, and much more – there’s something suitable for everyone.
See our Welcome timetable to find out more.
Monday, 22 September
Session: Campus tour for new students, meet the team and studio/programme introduction.
10am meet Zoe Taylor and Paul Hill outside the Creative Hub on the Waterside Campus at 10am. Short campus tour then back to the studio, CH103, in the Creative Hub (first floor). You will meet your staff teaching team and personal Tutor and talk though your timetable, the modules, the studio and facilities.
12:30-1:30pm lunch
1:30-2:30pm Ice breakers and ‘Show and Tell’ images. Please bring the image you have selected, outlined in the Welcome Pack, with you for today. We will be looking at these together to get to know you and the things you like to look at.
- Time: 10am – 4pm (BST)
- Location: Creative Hub, CH103 (first floor), Waterside campus
Tuesday, 23 September
Session: London Day Trip: V&A, Science and Natural History museums. The Design Museum is close by.
Leave UON – 8.30am from outside front of Senate building.
Leave London – Meet coach outside V&A (where dropped off) by 4pm
Arrive UON – Drop off outside front of Senate building 6.30 – 7pm
- Time: 8:30am – 7pm (BST)
Wednesday, 24 September
Session: Illustration Personal Tutorials – initial Personal Academic Tutorial (split between LB, ZT and CG) – see Google doc link TBC for your times and complete form in prep: https://forms.gle/6yxHKpPXoaTmBb9x5
- Time: 11am (BST)
- Location: CH102, Creative Hub, Waterside campus
Session: Library induction
- Time:
- Graphics 1.30 – 1.45pm
- Illustration 13.45 – 2pm
- Location: go to second floor of Learning Hub where you will be met by a librarian and introduced to the resources.
Session: Studio social
Join us back at the studio for 2.30pm – this time CH102! Where you can meet some of the second and third years. Bring along some beer, wine or soft drinks, nibbles. At the end of the day we will go for a social drink together at The Waterside Bar, we hope you can all join us at around 4pm!
Thursday, 25 September
- Time: 10am
- Location: Learning Hub
Today is free for you to explore Northampton, organise your accommodation, sign up with a Dr and dentist.
Friday, 26 September
- Time: 1 – 3pm
- Location: Engine Shed
Today is free for you to explore Northampton, organise your accommodation, sign up with a Dr and dentist.
See you all next Monday morning for a 10am start (please come up to the studio, CH103a for 9:45 – 9:50am)
Equipment
We will talk through what equipment you will need more during the face-to-face session on 22 September, but to get you going you will need:
- SD card for using Digital cameras – needed for photo inductions
- Memory Stick, External Hard Drive or cloud storage
- A3 or A4 sketchbook – not wirobound, black or brown paper
- Note pad
- Stationery – Pencils, fine liners etc
- A core kit of art materials; paints, range of soft drawing pencils (e.g 8b, 6b,3b) and additional materials appropriate to your chosen ways of working e.g. coloured pencils, oil pastels…
- Brush pen in black
- Swann scalpel and blades
- Scissors
- Laptops and power cable (if you have one – don’t worry if not, we have MacBook’s you can borrow when in our studio). If you are looking to get a computer, we teach on and use Apple MacBook’s – this tends to be the industry standard, although Windows based laptops are fine too.
- If you are considering buying a device of your own a Wacom Cintiq or equivalent is a better option than an iPad and similar price. They are also compatible with Adobe software that you will be using on the course (iPads aren’t).
For your first induction day, we want to see what inspires you.
On 22 September, we’d love for you to bring along a printed image that inspires you or represents your favourite example of illustration. This could be anything visual – an illustration, artwork, graphic design, photograph, or even an object or artifact – just something that really speaks to you creatively.
Please make sure:
- It’s printed (not digital), as we’ll be pinning them up.
- It’s no larger than A4 size.
- It’s appropriate for a shared space (nothing offensive, please!).
We’re excited to see what inspires you!
Read about illustration
Spend some time on the Creative Lives in Progress website – this is full of excellent articles about illustration and being an illustrator, along with It’s Nice that – articles and showcase of contemporary illustration, design, fine art and photography. Elephant and Booooooom also showcases art, design and illustration.