Zeitgeist & Cultural Signals
You’ll learn to identify cultural signals in media, fashion, art, technology, street culture and everyday behaviour. By connecting the dots, you’ll uncover the broader shifts shaping how people live, think and express themselves. Based on these insights, you’ll select your own case and formulate a cultural research question that will guide you throughout the module.

You explore the zeitgeist, cultural signals, societal shifts, behaviour and changing values, and learn how to place them in context through cultural research and signal spotting.

Visual Codes & Cultural Meaning
You’ll explore how colour, clothing, typography, symbols, photography and composition shape the meaning of an image. You’ll discover how visual codes shift across generations, cultures and social contexts, and learn to analyse visual language through a cultural lens — critically examining the history, values and forms of representation embedded within it.

You explore visual codes, semiotics and symbolism, and learn how representation and identity are shaped by history, art, religion, mythology, social class, subcultures and cultural context.

Visual Trends, Aesthetics & Cultural Change
You’ll explore how visual trends and aesthetics emerge, spread and evolve over time. You’ll learn to distinguish between a hype, a trend and a broader cultural shift. Using your Culture Scan and Visual Code Map, you’ll identify which developments are most relevant to your case and explore the new visual language that could emerge from them.

You explore visual trends and aesthetics, learn to distinguish trends from hypes, and investigate how cultural shifts and drivers of change shape emerging aesthetics and visual developments.

From Cultural Insight to Strategic Point of View
You’ll bring together cultural signals, visual codes and emerging shifts to explore what they mean for your brand, organisation or challenge. You’ll translate your observations into a relevant cultural insight and use it to define a clear cultural and visual position. This strategic point of view will form the foundation for the next stage of your Visual Culture Direction.

You translate cultural insights into strategic choices, bringing signals together to identify cultural tensions and opportunities and develop a relevant point of view, clear positioning and concept direction.

Visual Direction & Art DirectionBuilding on your cultural insights and strategic position, you develop your own visual direction. You explore how photography, colour, typography, form, composition, materials and styling can create meaning. Cases from brands such as Nike, including Jordan Brand, Nike Play and Nike Women, show how cultural insight and strategy can translate into a distinctive visual style and digital experience. This helps you turn research and strategy into a well-founded art direction with a clear cultural position.

You develop a clear visual direction and explore how photography, colour, typography, composition, materials and styling come together to create meaningful art direction and a distinctive cultural positioning.

AI, Representation & Synthetic Culture
You’ll explore generative AI both as a creative tool and as part of contemporary visual culture. Which ideas about beauty, identity, culture and power does AI reinforce — and which perspectives are missing? Through experimentation, you’ll discover how technology can reproduce, distort or challenge existing visual codes.

You explore generative AI and synthetic culture, examining how datasets, bias and representation shape stereotypes, authenticity, authorship, cultural appropriation and emerging AI aesthetics.

Cultural Forecasting & Future Visual Culture
You’ll use cultural signals and emerging shifts to explore what could take shape next. Drawing on changing values, needs and behaviours, you’ll develop a well-founded future scenario and translate it into new visual codes, aesthetics and forms of communication. In this way, you’ll use forecasting as a creative tool to help shape the visual culture of tomorrow.

You explore cultural forecasting and speculative design, using signals of change and scenario building to anticipate emerging culture, future aesthetics and new visual directions.

Final Visual Culture Direction
You’ll bring together cultural research, visual codes, strategic insight and creative development into one compelling Visual Culture Direction. In your final presentation, you’ll not only show the visual direction you’ve developed, but also demonstrate why it is culturally relevant, the meaning it creates and how it could evolve in the future.

You bring cultural strategy, visual direction and storytelling together to create a well-substantiated final direction, which you present with a clear perspective on the future.