Photography is Graphics

Where photography becomes Visual Communication.

About This Course

Most design starts with photography. Most photography ends up in design. This course sits at that intersection. You'll learn to move between the two: shooting with intention, then taking that image into Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to build something with it. You'll work to a brief. A real one, with a problem to solve and a format to deliver. By the end of term you'll have a body of work that sits across two disciplines and a working knowledge of the tools that connect them. This is not a software tutorial. It's a production course.

What You'll Create

A response to a set brief combining original photography and graphic design.
Final work produced across Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
A printed and/or screen-based final piece suitable for public exhibition.
A short verbal presentation on the brief, the decisions made, and the outcome.

Course Details

Age Range: 15-18
Term: Term 1
Schedule: Tuesdays, 6:00pm
Duration: 10 weeks
Price: $480
Spots Available: 5 of 5

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What You'll Learn

• You'll shoot for a brief, not just for yourself.
• You'll bring photography into a graphic context, without losing what made it work.
• You'll learn how a brief narrows a hundred options down to one right answer.
• You'll move between three different tools without losing the thread of one idea.
• You'll learn the difference between a photo that's finished and a photo that's production-ready.
• You'll present and defend a design decision.

The Support You'll Get

You won't be handed the answer. You'll be shown how to find it.

Your practitioner has spent years making their own work, and their own mistakes. In the studio they work alongside you: asking the right questions, pointing out options you hadn't seen, helping you push through the moment you get stuck. The ideas stay yours. The decisions stay yours. They're there so you're never finding the way through alone.

Week by Week

Week 1: What is a brief? Shooting for it, with an outcome in mind.

Week 2: Photoshop fundamentals. Getting an image production-ready.

Week 3: Compositing. Combining multiple images into a single cohesive frame.

Week 4: Illustrator intro. Type, vector, and how they sit alongside photography.

Week 5: InDesign intro. Grid, layout, image placement, type hierarchy.

Week 6: Layout in practice. Building a page that holds photography and graphics together.

Week 7: Brief response. Full draft, then refinement.

Week 8: Exhibition. Printed and screen-based work presented publicly.

Every course ends with an exhibition

Celebrate what you created with the people and our community. Every term concludes with a presentation or exhibition of your work: a chance to share your process, your ideas, and what you've made.

Your Instructor

Andrew Chew

Visual Communication & Photography

Andrew studied Visual Communication, majoring in Photography. Twenty years on, he's worked as a designer, photographer and gallery director, running No Vacancy Gallery and later directing YAVA. He built Assembly because the system around young people kept treating creativity as decoration instead of discipline. He teaches the way he's worked: try, fail, try again. Back your ideas. Test them. Push through when it's not working yet. He's spent years making his own work and his own mistakes, and in the studio he works alongside you, showing you how to look, how to frame, how to decide what matters, then make it.