the graphic communication design programme provides a community of conceptual and creative thinkers and makers who share a commitment to exploring the vast and ever-expanding field of graphic design. our industry is led by technological transformation and driven by emerging modes of communication. ba graphic communication design at central saint martins will provide you with a solid grounding in the discipline's core practices, contexts and applications, while also encouraging you to test and stretch its boundaries. through graphic design, we bring a diverse range of perspectives and approaches to engage actively with the ways the world is changing. as a community, we continuously remix and redefine the future of our discipline and how it interacts with environmental, cultural and social complexities. we have embedded teaching and learning practices that actively encourage you to bring your own way of working, your own way of thinking and your own practice-based interests to the table. in fact, we see the course as a space for us – a community of students, tutors and practitioners – to explore and interrogate graphic communication design together. the structure of the course enables mobility across gcd practices and gcd platforms that correspond to areas of contemporary graphic design practice. the choices you make and the work you produce will give focus to the intentions, contexts and values unique to your practice. this flexible journey through the course is devised to support three types of practitioner: the inter-disciplinary designer or polymath who wants to stay broad-based the hybrid designer who works across a targeted combination of areas the specialist who has more specific discipline focus engaging with climate, racial and social justice in the graphic communication design community at central saint martins the accelerating climate and ecological emergency is exposing the unsustainability and injustice of the political, social, and economic systems that have created them. an overarching goal for our programme community has necessarily become to question how graphic communication design practices can critique and intervene in the systems of extraction and exploitation that have led us to the brink of collapse. historically, graphic design has serviced various imbalanced power structures, and in this way, has contributed to perpetuating climate, racial and social injustices. at the same time, our discipline’s media and methods provide powerful tools for negotiating and communicating the complexities of the current moment. the need for high quality and carefully nuanced communication is increasing as the complexity of intersecting crises escalates. in the context of widespread disinformation and cultures of media illiteracy, graphic communication design's capacity for enhancing existing forms of public discourse – and generating new forms – is much needed. our programme is distinct in both its scale and its diversity and is well positioned to engage with our present challenges. we will consider these kinds of questions from a range of creative perspectives: how might graphic and communication design engage proactively with wider institutions and systems? what role might our practices play in envisioning just and sustainable alternatives? what is the role of communication in redefining and recreating relations between humanity and nature? as a community, we will collectively reimagine current and future role(s) for graphic communication design in the face of these urgent crises. we see this as a serious and vital challenge—the future has yet to be designed!