Design (Placement Year)

BA Hons

  • UCAS code W282
  • Entry year 2026 or 2025
  • A level requirements ABB
  • Duration Full time 4 years
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We welcome applications from the United States of America

We've put together information and resources to guide your application journey as a student from the United States of America.

Overview

Top reasons to study with us

  • 5

    5th for graduate prospects (Art and Design)

    The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide (2025)

  • 5

    5th for Product Design

    The Guardian University Guide (2025)

  • 7

    7th for Art and Design

    The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide (2025)

Design prepares you to tackle the complex challenges of today’s world by developing versatile skills in graphics, products, and user experience (UX/UI). You’ll learn to solve problems with creativity, design research, and professional visualisation techniques. Taught by experts from our world-class design research lab, this programme equips you for a career in design agencies, tech companies, healthcare, education, public services, and beyond — wherever innovation is needed.

Why Lancaster?

  • Develop a future-focused, adaptable, and agile skill set through a broad design curriculum that enables you to consider how design can address complex challenges
  • Take a course that helps you become a socially and environmentally responsible designer
  • Benefit from a research-driven approach to teaching, learning from expert designers and practitioners who push the boundaries of design
  • Gain valuable industry experience through working on live briefs with real-world clients
  • Take advantage of our close links with globally renowned design research lab, ImaginationLancaster

Visualise. Experiment. Create.

At Lancaster, we view design as a way of understanding the world, as a creative process that can address any problem, and contribute to creating a better society. You will work on projects that help you put this view into practice.

Our carefully curated curriculum nurtures creative experimentation, intellectual inquiry, adaptability, critical thinking and ethical awareness as well as emphasising the importance of developing design solutions that are rooted in robust design research.

You will learn how to conduct design research using a broad range of design methods, such as sketchbooks, storyboarding, design workshops, prototyping, journey mapping, empathy mapping, IDEO cards, and many more, allowing you to translate that research into exciting, relevant design solutions visualised to industry standard. This approach expands your horizons whilst fostering adaptability as it enables you to work on a range of projects spanning varied topics such as, environmental and social sustainability, healthier lifestyles, urban wellbeing, and digital futures.

Our research-driven approach to design allows you to gain skills not only in creating innovative design solutions but also in design processes, methods, and tools, as well as identifying problems and opportunities that would benefit from design – a skill valued by many different employers.

Explore what interests you

You will have the opportunity to explore a wide range of topics during your time at Lancaster, giving you the flexibility to dive deeper into the design methods and issues that interest you most. Your final year project will showcase a wide range of innovative and impactful ideas. Past graduates have completed projects such as:

  • Designing solutions to support people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Creating digital and physical interventions to enhance children’s language learning
  • Developing a ‘wardrobe for life’ to promote sustainability
  • Experiential design concepts for immersive art edutainment exhibitions
  • Investigating the tension between liveability and sustainability in urban planning
  • Assessing the potential of biomimetic design to benefit the circular economy
  • Designing welcoming spaces in prisons for neurodivergent individuals to better connect with their families

Our broad Design curriculum will allow you to develop an adaptable, futures-focused mindset, with transferable skills that will enable you to stand out in the design industry.

Discover your design identity

Throughout your degree, you will be encouraged to explore and develop your own design identity and values. By doing this, you will graduate with a strong sense of where you want to take your design career, and you will develop your portfolio to reflect this.

To support you in planning your future career, we will help you gain professional contacts by inviting design professionals, many of whom are our alumni, to share their experiences of working in the design industry. You will also have the opportunity to work on live briefs from organisations such as RSA and D&AD as well as with real-world clients, giving you valuable experience you can take forward into your career. In your final year, our Design Consultancy module enables you to work with a real client for the entire year.

Previously, briefs have included:

  • Packaging design solutions for The Chocolate Cottage
  • Developing a creative campaign to increase The Northern Design Festival impact
  • Developing a brand bible for Cerys, a local accounting company
  • Working with Anthesis Group to design a strategy to acquire Tony's Chocolonely as their client
  • Creating a campaign to raise awareness of Energy Lancaster’s work to transition Lancaster University to Net Zero

Furthermore, our students often secure design internships that have informed their future directions. Internships have taken place at the globally recognised design agency Pentagram, as well as Nesta, Kelloggs, L’Oréal, BUPA, and Nestlé amongst others. Ultimately, your portfolio will reflect your values, as well as your ability to conduct design research and create exciting design solutions that address a diverse range of issues.

Creative Arts Facilities at Lancaster University

Whatever creative arts subject you choose, you’ll find we have specialist spaces and equipment to inspire your studies.

Your Placement Year

Sometimes known as a year in industry, your placement year will take place between your second and final year of study and this will extend your degree to four years.

Placements and Internships

Hear from students and employers on how Lancaster University could support you to gain real-world experience and bolster your CV with a placement or internship as part of your degree.

A student working on a piece of stained glass.

A placement year is an excellent way to...

  • try out a role that you may be interested in as a career path
  • start to build your professional network (some placement students are offered permanent roles to return to after they graduate)
  • develop skills, knowledge and experience to put you ahead of the field when you graduate

You'll spend your third year...

in a graduate-level position, where you’ll work for between nine and twelve months in the type of role that you might be considering for after you graduate. A very wide range of companies and organisations offer placements across all sectors.

As a full-time employee, you’ll have a job description with specific responsibilities and opportunities to access training and development, the same as other employees.

A whiteboard showing a diagram of 'how to create a CV'

Our Careers and Placements Team...

will help you to search and compete for a suitable placement with expert advice and resources, such as creating an effective CV, and tips for applications and interviews.

You will still be a Lancaster University student during your placement and we’ll keep in touch to check how you are getting on.

Students drinking coffee in a campus coffee bar

The university will...

use all reasonable effort to support you to find a suitable placement for your studies. While a placement role may not be available in a field or organisation that is directly related to your academic studies or career aspirations, all offer valuable experience of working at a graduate level and gaining a range of professional skills.

If you are unsuccessful in securing a suitable placement for your third year, you will be able to transfer to the equivalent non-placement degree scheme and continue with your studies at Lancaster, finishing your degree after your third year.

Careers

As a Lancaster Design graduate, you will integrate practical design skills with rigorous design research, enabling you to create innovative, impactful solutions across diverse challenges. This combination of creative thinking and an adaptable, research-driven approach will equip you to contribute meaningfully within the creative industries and beyond.

BA Hons Design empowers you to consider a range of existing and emerging careers that include:

  • User experience (UX) designer
  • Design researcher
  • Graphic designer
  • Interaction designer
  • Brand manager
  • Design facilitator
  • Service designer
  • Design consultant
  • Virtual/augmented reality designer
  • Ethics and inclusion designer
  • AI interface designer
  • Product designer

Our alumni have found success in varied settings from joining large organisations such as Nestlé, Cooperative Bank and Capgemini to successfully pursuing freelancing careers.

Additionally, many graduates have secured places on postgraduate courses at Lancaster University and other prestigious institutions in the UK as well as worldwide, including The Royal College of Arts, University College London, University Arts London, Alto University in Finland, University of Twente in The Netherlands, and others. This underscores our commitment to equipping you not only with technical and creative skills but also with a mindset geared toward lifelong learning and personal development.

Careers and employability support

Our degrees open up an extremely wide array of career pathways in businesses and organisations, large and small, in the UK and overseas.

We run a paid internship scheme specifically for our arts, humanities and social sciences students, supported by a specialist Employability Team. The team offer individual consultations and tailored application guidance, as well as careers events, development opportunities, and resources.

Whether you have a clear idea of your potential career path or need some help considering the options, our friendly team is on hand.

Lancaster is unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award which recognises activities such as work experience, community engagement or volunteering and social development. A valuable addition to your CV!

Find out more about Lancaster’s careers events, extensive resources and personal support for Careers and Employability.

Lizzie Huckett, alumni

Lizzie's career in user experience

I am a User Experience Designer at Capgemini, a technology consultancy, working within the design team of the Customer Experience department. I consult with clients from both the public and private sectors to enhance their digital interfaces. My role allows me to dive into various aspects of UX, including user research, content design, UX/UI design, service design, and interaction design. I am loving the opportunities to work on different client projects and explore various areas of UX. 

My passion for UX was sparked while studying on the Design (BA) course at Lancaster, where I had the opportunity to tailor my third-year projects to UX, inspiring me to pursue a career in this field.

Lizzie Huckett, BA Design, Graduated 2024 

Careers

Find out about some of the careers our alumni have entered into after graduation.

Entry requirements

These are the typical grades that you will need to study this course. You may need to have qualifications in relevant subjects. In some cases we may also ask you to attend an interview or submit a portfolio. You must also meet our English language requirements.

Find more about these qualifications and others not shown here

Learn about how we will assess your application

Qualifications and typical requirements accordion

Contact Admissions

If you are thinking of applying to Lancaster and you would like to ask us a question, please complete our enquiry form and one of our team will get back to you.

International foundation programmes

Delivered in partnership with INTO Lancaster University, our one-year tailored foundation pathways are designed to improve your subject knowledge and English language skills to the level required by a range of Lancaster University degrees. Visit the INTO Lancaster University website for more details and a list of eligible degrees you can progress onto.

Contextual admissions

Contextual admissions could help you gain a place at university if you have faced additional challenges during your education which might have impacted your results. Visit our contextual admissions page to find out about how this works and whether you could be eligible.

Course structure

Enhancing our curriculum

We continually review and enhance our curriculum to ensure we are delivering the best possible learning experience, and to make sure that the subject knowledge and transferable skills you develop will prepare you for your future.

We will publish more detailed information about the structure of this degree course for 2026-entry in June 2025, ahead of our summer undergraduate open days. This will include overviews of the core modules you will take and examples of optional modules which may be available to you.

Fees and funding

We set our fees on an annual basis and the 2026/27 entry fees have not yet been set.

As a guide, our fees in 2025/26 were:

Home International
£9,535 £24,700

Fees and funding information

Additional fees and funding information accordion

Scholarships and bursaries

Details of our scholarships and bursaries for students starting in 2026 are not yet available.

You can use our scholarships for 2025-entry applicants as guidance.

Important information

The information on this site relates primarily to 2026/2027 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.

The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.

More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.

Our Students’ Charter

We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies.

Undergraduate open days 2025

Our summer and autumn open days will give you Lancaster University in a day. Visit campus and put yourself in the picture.

Undergraduate Open Days
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  • Virtual tour

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  • Accommodation guide

    Most first-year undergraduate students choose to live on campus, where you’ll find accommodation to suit different preferences and budgets.

  • The city and beyond

    Our historic city is student-friendly and home to a diverse and welcoming community. Beyond the city you'll find a stunning coastline and the picturesque Lake District.