Postgraduate in Design and Communication Strategies

The Postgraduate in Design and Communication Strategies trains design and communication professionals with a global and strategic vision, capable of structuring innovative solutions in the short, medium and long term, as well as integrating traditional communication media with digital media, promoting interaction and constant dialogue with the user.

What are the keys to communicate in a persuasive way? How to enhance creativity? How to generate a creative leap that provides uniqueness and effectiveness? In a context that is progressively more complex and saturated with information, the relationship established by public and private organizations with society is in full swing. Both companies and public institutions that previously sent products and services to the market unidirectionally, now seek to manage a strategic communication oriented to interaction with the user. In this change, creativity, design and visual communication play a key role.

Communication and context

Theoretical framework that establishes the main concepts and the context for the analysis and the proposal of creative solutions.

• Biological origin of communication
• The reptilian, mammalian and reactional brain
• Communication theories. Semiotics and communication
  • Fundamental principles of human communication
  • The strategic dimension of communication
  •  The persuasive dimension of communication
• An ethnographic look at communication
• Companies’ communication requirements
• Strategic communication in public administration
• Strategy in personal presentations
   

Analysis and strategy

In this context, the various media available to perform an action are studied: traditional media and new digital supports. Students are provided with tools to analyze and plan campaigns, such as comprehensive marketing and strategic planning.

• Analysis and strategy
• Environment analysis
• Segmentation and targets
• Positioning
• Corporate strategy: branding and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)
• Communication strategy and strategic planning
• Disciplines:
  • Paid: investment in advertising media
  • Owned: definition of brand assets and digital presence
  • Earned: definition of PR and social media management

Languages, supports and channels

Theoretical framework and creative praxis of graphic communication from the point of view of its ability to produce and convey messages that add value to organizations on the basis of a planned strategy.

• Design and communication.
• Languages, supports and channels.
• Aesthetics and style in graphic communication.
• Resources of visual communication
• Transmedia communication
• Social Media
• Storytelling

A project is a journey. Hourglass method

Acquisition of project methodology. Being able to combine all these disciplines and media effectively in a communication project, with the aim to position a brand, sell a product or spread a social action.

• Project theory of design. Prefiguration
• Spiral project method
• Chart. Diagrams for management
• Project strategy, stages, planning and dynamics
• Efficiency of public presentations
   

Final project

Realization of a tutored final project whose aim is to acquire project methodology, so that it includes the contents and tools conveyed during the course, such as the preparation of the student for carrying out complex projects efficiently.

• Project tutorials and workshops.
• Script and dramatic resources for the presentation of projects.

• Provide students with a competitive professional profile that incorporates the latest trends in communication and global marketing into their praxis.
• Enhance creativity as a factor of differentiation and positioning, for organisations in both the public and private sectors
• Train new professionals with a strategic vision and thinking towards communication and design, to achieve real and efficient solutions to the problems raised.
• Offer designers and communication professionals the possibility of integrating the knowledge acquired in a professional practice from the perspective of design.
• Create a training framework that integrates the latest user-centred design research criteria with the current practice of the advertising activity.
• Train effective, critical and competitive advertising specialists.

• Develop their own creative abilities and apply them to communication projects for both companies and institutions to communicate brands, products or services.
• Develop various creative methods that work as a starting point for disruptive projects in the field of advertising with a clear persuasive will.
• Incorporate strategic planning as a step to define the value proposal, transform it into a creative concept and develop it into an efficient communicative action.
• Ability to explore and analyse the business world, know their communication needs and develop creative skills to solve them in certain situations.
• Ability to create transmedia communicative mechanisms after analysing and defining the needs, motivations and ideals of the users.
• Ability to elaborate one’s reflective thoughts born of one’s projectual activity and to defend them in front of the community of practice with discernment and conviction.
• Ability to propose and develop creative concepts for the brand territories creation.
• Identify the three semionarrative levels of the canonical narrative and apply them in the persuasive communication world.
• Distinguish and clearly identify the three brain levels, from which thoughts and ideas that shape the behaviour before the purchase act are created.
• Discern between the several attributes: appropriation, simulation, impurity, fusion, spectacle, ephemeral, artifice and eroticism to apply them in advertising projects.