Make-up & Hair Design BA (Hons)
Epsom
Course overview
From the edgiest of fashion editorials to creating Hollywood glamour for the red carpet, you’ll create beauty masterpieces on our innovative BA (Hons) Make-up and Hair Design course.
This course will teach you everything you need to know about the beauty industry, from products to publications, collaborating with creative directors and advertisers to working with high-profile clients.
You’ll be able to create, refine and present your work in style with our extensive facilities and collaborate with peers. As you study, you'll develop your in-depth industry knowledge, practical skills and individual signature style so that, by the time you graduate, you’ll have a rich portfolio of work to set you up in your career.
Please note - this course will be moving from UCA Rochester to UCA Epsom for 2022 entry. If you already have credits from another university, or if you have work experience to an equivalent level, you can apply to enter directly into year 2 of the course at Rochester.
Our standard three year undergraduate degree for those who meet the entry requirements for higher education.
UCAS Code for 3 year/standard: W452
A four year degree programme, including a foundation year to help develop your creativity before you embark on year one of a degree.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year: W45A
A four year course, specifically designed to provide international students with the English language and creative skills before they embark on year one of a degree.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year: W45C
A four year programme, which sees you spend an entire year gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice: W453
A five year course, including a foundation year to help develop your creativity before you embark on year one of a degree, and a year on a professional placement gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W45B
A five year course, including an international foundation year concentrating on English language and core creative skills before you embark on year one of a degree, and a year on a professional placement gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W45D
Course Details
The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.
UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.
You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.
For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has an Integrated International Foundation Year to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity.
This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.
You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.
Guest Speakers’ Series
You’ll join students across the School of Fashion & Textiles for our Industry Guest Speakers’ Series – you’ll hear from people with diverse backgrounds, skills and career paths representing the diversity of our student community, to inspire you to kick-start your thinking about your own career journey.
Creative Publication
You’ll examine the diversity of world leading makeup and hair professionals through colour textures and historical relevance. This unit focuses on the skill of research, reference and application of makeup and hair design, through creating imagery for a creative publication. By knowing and understanding iconic imagery and industry professionals, we discover the development of the makeup and hair industry from its humble beginnings to its current global status.
Equality diversity and inclusion
You’ll be asked to explore and discover yourself and introduce who you are to your peers. This will be achieved through an individual creative outcome that explores their own history. To understand who they are, we ask learners to look at their friends and family and investigate into their own history, or the history of others around them. We are shaped by our environment, customs, traditions and beliefs and we have become who we are because of the people who have influenced us in some way. We have both the biological family and the family we create. We want you to think imaginatively about presenting your findings in a creative document.
Body paint and airbrushing for fashion
The art of body painting covers a vast area of painted effects and some makeup artists choose to specialise in this subject, usually in fashion, commercial, film and TV industries. This unit is about the design and application of airbrushing and body art – you’ll take an individual fashion house and design a garment that will be seen in a new collection. The difference is, this garment is purely painted on the body, considering the tone, shading and highlighting and client consistently.
Hackathon
In your first Opportunity Week, you’ll work with others on a high-intensity project. You’ll use a new piece of software or equipment to familiarise yourself with the technology that is becoming ubiquitous in the industry. For instance, you may be asked to design a website, an Instagram filter, an avatar, a virtual garment or digital prints.
Cultural narratives
This unit calls for you to branch out and explore the world outside of your own experience. Being culturally aware means that artists are sensitive and well informed of others' life occurrences and are inspired to create a platform to voice their views on such topics. So, for this unit, you’ll be set a client project that allows you room for creativity and provide a brand heritage, unique selling point and general established aesthetic for you to communicate an innovative beauty editorial.
Professional Practice
As we approach the end of your first academic year, you will curate and build a Year 1 digital and/or physical portfolio. The portfolio will allow you to reflect, review, update and present all your unit outcomes in one place to demonstrate your knowledge/understanding, technical and professional skills as a makeup artist and hair designer. This is your first step in placing your own practice in an industry context.
Business of Fashion
You’ll be introduced to the fundamental principles of fashion business and practices through a global lens. You’ll learn about how the macro environment affects the fashion industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you to the various market levels and sectors, as well as industry structure, supply chain, distribution, marketing and commercialisation of products and services to end users.
ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are small pieces of individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across UCA, and offer a flexible, impactful learning experience. They expand your creative horizon by accessing learning topics that would not otherwise be scheduled on your course specific timetable.
Career Week
You’ll start the second year with an intensive, interactive career preparation week. It prepares you for your work placement, through preparing your CV and cover letters, developing personal branding on professional social networks, networking and interview preparation.
Innovative Motion
You will research, analyse and explore the way in which the beauty industry collaborates with fashion film and performance. This unit challenges you to explore your artistic identity through a range of creative outcomes including moving image, and how makeup and hair is considered in a 360 degree format. You’ll broaden your skill base and also your understanding of the possible modes of artistic expression in creative image practice.
The Conscious Practitioner
Through technology, the world and all its wonders have become more accessible. Through the screen, we can connect globally in a second. The aim of this unit is to encourage learners to look at the We & Us of the world. You’ll explore global cultures through the lens of fashion and other influent mediums, such as global cinema, historical and modern cultural movements.
Elective - Special Effects for Fashion
You’ll learn the specialised skills required for 3D makeup in a fashion and performance context. Through this unit, you’ll embark on using a range of products, tools and techniques to develop skills required for special effects makeup in fashion.
Elective - Digital Extremes for Fashion
Stretch your understanding of your practical skills through digital enhancement. You’ll learn to create virtual characters and avatars, learn about extreme photoshop to enhance or distort your images, and create a dossier of reflective research and designs.
Dragon's Den
Have you ever watched Dragon’s Den on the BBC? Have you ever dreamed of being one of the contestants? Have you got a business idea? Now is your chance to become the next big fashion and textiles entrepreneur. You’ll work in multi-disciplinary teams to prepare a short business plan, a prototype and pitch their ideas to a panel of industry judges.
Expression Identity
To prepare you for your final year of studies, Expression Identity looks to you to identify your style and creative path, linking it to your thoughts, ideas and creative journey through makeup and hair design. It is at this point of the course that you should truly feel and act like makeup and hair designers and understand the work it takes to create movements and conversations within the industry through your practice. You’ll construct an art-directed publication that features well-researched and developed content based on your topic of interest.
Engaging with Opportunities
As we approach the end of your second academic year, you will curate and build a Year 2 digital portfolio. The portfolio will allow you to reflect, review, update and present all your unit outcomes in one place to demonstrate your knowledge/understanding, technical and professional skills as a fashion image and styling practitioner. This is your next step in placing your own practice in an industry context.
Placement
You will undertake and reflect upon work-based learning while on placement (and/or through self-managed ‘freelance’ or competition projects), lasting a minimum of three weeks. This will enable you to observe and understand the workings of a range of industry practices, gaining valuable insight into your chosen field through your own experiences, your studies, and by learning from the experiences of your peers.
ATOM Activities
ATOM activities are small pieces of individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across UCA, and offer a flexible, impactful learning experience. They expand your creative horizon by accessing learning topics that would not otherwise be scheduled on your course specific timetable.
If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.
While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.
Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment
Project Pitch
Your final year begins with a project pitch week. This is your opportunity to share ideas that you will have developed over the summer about your degree project, receive feedback and fine tune it before you start actively working on it as part of your last year at university.
Creative Partners
In a saturated market, how we communicate and present our concepts for innovation through fashion imagery is crucial to successful visual communication and creative collaborations. In this unit, we will introduce you to a client who will set a research question that is relevant to current industry practice. Using the research question as a starting point, you will take a broader view in response to the client brief and to your own developing portfolio, specialist skills and practice. The outcome will develop through an in-depth knowledge and understanding of all areas in which fashion, makeup and hair operates.
Critical Thinking Through Fashion
Following on from your Academic Proposal (completed at the end of Year 2), and your summer project, you’ll define your angle or argument, and communicate this through creative content for a specified platform or publication. The creative outcome will be supported by a research document in which you reflect on your learning journey. You will evidence the growth of the argument and contextualise the topic within the global fashion industry.
Graduate Career Fair
The Graduate Career Fair takes place during the first week of your second term to help your job search as you prepare for life after graduation. Companies that are actively hiring in your sector will be present to give you information about them, the kind of candidates they are looking for and their hiring process.
Your Artistic Practice
For your final project on the course, you are expected to create a substantial project that focuses on your area of professional interest and showcases your specialist skills. This work may take a variety of forms (such as: a body of editorial work within a publication; a series of films; an exploration of digital media platforms; photography, product development, design, collage and illustration, ethical or culturally specific narratives, virtual reality, retail or an installation concept; or a combination of some, none, or all of these). You’ll also complete a research document, as well as your final Personal Development Planning Career Document to support you in your professional practice after graduation.
Tuition fees
2022 course fees for Year 1 entry and Integrated Foundation Year:
- UK students - £9,250
- EU students - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
- International students - £16,950
If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2022 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850 (UK students) and £3,390 (International students). You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.
Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials. These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of your Course Information for details of the costs you may incur.
Further information
For more detailed information about our course fees and any financial support you may be entitled to please see our fees and finance pages.
The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only. Costs may increase each year during a student’s period of continued registration on course in line with inflation (subject to any maximum regulated tuition fee limit). Any adjustment for continuing students will be at or below the RPI-X forecast rate.
Industry placement
offer
Preparing graduates for successful careers underpins everything we do, and all students on this course will be offered an industry placement anywhere between two weeks and a year in length, depending on their individual needs. We’ll draw on our wide range of contacts within the creative industries to ensure you’re offered opportunities that align with your interests and future career aspirations.
Course specifications
Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.
Entry requirements
BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year
The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:
- 112 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
- 112 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
The standard entry requirements for these courses are one of the following:
- 64 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Merit, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
- 64 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
For these courses you need to have completed 12 years* of schooling (with good grades) and show strong evidence of your ability to successfully complete the programme and progress onto your chosen degree.
*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades - in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry pathways:
BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year
For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. If you would prefer to upload a portfolio digitally, there is also the option to submit it online via your UCA Applicant Portal. Further information will be provided once you have applied.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
Apply Now
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UCAS Institution
C93
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UCAS Code for 3 year/standard
W452
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UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice
W453
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year
W45A
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year
W45C
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W45B
-
UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W45D
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