Graphic Design and Communication

Teaching is student-centred and quality-oriented: transparency, attention to inclusion and teamwork. The method is the one of the atelier: you learn by doing, but with guidance and vision. Each project starts with a question (a theme, a context, an audience) and grows in stages: research and references, concept, ideation, testing, prototypes, revision, production and presentation.

Critiques and feedback are regular, consistent and personalised, with clear evaluation criteria: you learn to explain your choices, listen, improve and take responsibility for what you put out into the world.

You work in laboratories with dedicated software and AI tools, supported by cultural disciplines that give depth of vision and thought (semiotics, perception, sociology, contemporary languages). Thus, technique is never an end in itself: it serves to realise a personal and credible language. Throughout the year, workshops and projects are carried out with companies, organisations, cultural institutions and public administrations: from the promotion of places and communities to communication for exhibitions, events, hospitality, services and campaigns. Opportunities for collaboration with other academic courses and with the IED Network broaden the scope for discussion and international horizons, without losing the “student-friendly” approach of Como: more time to produce quality, less dispersion.

The three-year course in Graphics and Communication is designed for those who are curious, observe the world through images and want to learn how to transform ideas and content into contemporary visual projects.

This course is suitable for students from any type of secondary school: academic, technical and vocational. You need to be curious and attracted to images, and willing to get fully involved, from pencil to digital, but you don't need to have a “perfect” portfolio: here you will build your skills step by step and enhance your existing formal and informal knowledge, repositioning it within a new visual framework. If you wish, you can bring school or personal work (even informal) - drawings, photos, layouts, videos, experiments - and start from there to develop your method, language and awareness.

Because it combines visual culture and practical work in an Academy of Fine Arts: you learn to design without losing depth, to experiment without losing rigour, and to develop technical skills and artistic sensitivity.

Because it provides cross-disciplinary training: typography, image, photography, illustration, video, publishing, new media. You will become capable of moving between different languages and bringing them together in a single project, building a rich and coherent portfolio.

Because it prepares you for the present: in the age of AI, it is not enough to know how to generate images. Here you will learn to use AI judiciously - to explore ideas and variations - but above all to direct: to choose, to give coherence, to evaluate quality, rights and impact. The final signature remains yours: your vision, your idea and your hand.

Because you study at the Academy, where your potential will be brought out and your talents enhanced, and because you study in Como, in a student-friendly environment, with Milan within easy reach: a balance that helps you work continuously and produce quality.