Our Design Courses

Diploma of Design (Visual Communication)

Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication)

Notable Alumni

Scott Petts
Award Winning Designer and Creative Director
Brett Morris
Design Director, Coca Cola Australia
George Kacevski
Executive Creative Director, Zebrar and Acentric

From day one you’ll attend classes set up in studio-like environments and have access to a range of state of the art equipment and software. All JMC Design students receive a full Adobe Creative Cloud licence allowing for use on their personal computer.

Our Lecturers

Dr Melissa Silk

National Head of Design

With over thirty years of creative practice, Melissa collaborates with many thinkers and makers to design experiences that embed the Arts in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEAM). Melissa is co-director of STEAMpop.zone while also engaged in research contributing to learning ecologies spanning creative intelligence and innovation, transdisciplinary education, and designing for preferred futures. Melissa enjoys being part of a bold community of multipotentialities intent on developing and sharing unique learning experiences for everybody.

Awards: Beth Southwell Award for Education Research 

Dr Melissa Silk

National Head of Design

With over thirty years of creative practice, Melissa collaborates with many thinkers and makers to design experiences that embed the Arts in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEAM). Melissa is co-director of STEAMpop.zone while also engaged in research contributing to learning ecologies spanning creative intelligence and innovation, transdisciplinary education, and designing for preferred futures. Melissa enjoys being part of a bold community of multipotentialities intent on developing and sharing unique learning experiences for everybody.

Awards: Beth Southwell Award for Education Research 

Andrew Barnum

Design Lecturer

Andrew Barnum is a Designer, Educator and Artist and continues to work on projects and in contexts that synthesise his experience and inspiration as a creative practitioner. In Design he is the chief creative officer of Social Design Action consultancy Peopleness, which is human-centered design focused. In education he is a PhD candidate at UTS researching the potential dislocation between Australian song, cultural identity and place in the digital age, and is course author and lecturer in the Bachelor of Design (Digital Design) at JMC Academy in Sydney.

As an artist his passion is songwriting and painting with independent releases on iTunes and Spotify as Andrew Barnum and Vitabeats, with a new project under the moniker of Memory Collective. His most recent paintings are a series of colour field investigations in Australian ‘colours in common.’

Andrew Barnum

Design Lecturer

Andrew Barnum is a Designer, Educator and Artist and continues to work on projects and in contexts that synthesise his experience and inspiration as a creative practitioner. In Design he is the chief creative officer of Social Design Action consultancy Peopleness, which is human-centered design focused. In education he is a PhD candidate at UTS researching the potential dislocation between Australian song, cultural identity and place in the digital age, and is course author and lecturer in the Bachelor of Design (Digital Design) at JMC Academy in Sydney.

As an artist his passion is songwriting and painting with independent releases on iTunes and Spotify as Andrew Barnum and Vitabeats, with a new project under the moniker of Memory Collective. His most recent paintings are a series of colour field investigations in Australian ‘colours in common.’

You will need to bring the following to your course:

  • Laptop: Macbook Pro or similarly powered
  • Windows laptop, running latest OS
  • Device: Smartphone or Tablet
  • Journal: A5 size Blank pages
  • Pen: Felt-tip 0.3-0.5
  • Pencils: HB-2B, rulers and erasers

JMC will supply you with Adobe Creative Cloud software

At application, we are most keen to learn about your passion and reasons for wanting to study design. In addition to that, we ask that you answer the following two questions prior to coming in for the interview:

  1. Show us your best piece of work

What’s something you’ve created that you’re really proud of? It can be any of the following:

  • An image (a photography piece, an illustration or a painting)
  • A project (an idea, a story, a film critique, a blog, etc…)
  • A product (a website, an animation, a poster, presentation, etc…)

Write a small paragraph explaining your choices and rationale behind it. Show us your rigor and initiative. Give us an insight into your creative approach, your creativity and the resulting output.

  1. Tell us your thoughts
  • Choose a brand that you like and think is successful; write a short paragraph reflecting on why you like it and the reasons behind its success.
  • Choose a brand that you dislike or has not been doing well; write a short paragraph reflecting on what the issues are and how they might improve.

Show us the way you see the world around you, your standard of what makes a design good or bad and an insight into your thought process.

No. We equip you with digital tools that allow you to create high-functioning prototypes without coding. 

This course is very hands on, and you will tackle real world creative projects. However, having a foundational understanding of design theory is still vitally important. There is approximately a 25% (theory) to 75% (practice) balance.

No. We assess your work as would happen in the workplace via proposal documents and reports, presentations and demonstrations.

As with any design you will need to communicate ideas via drawing and sketching. We believe anyone can learn how to think visually, and we teach sketching techniques right from the beginning. So, if you are open to making marks and learning how to do it well, that’s all you need to start!