School of Visual Arts in Barcelona

IED Visual Arts is the fully self-contained school focusing on image and everything related to its communication.

A creative laboratory where students learn about the tools, the codes of lexicon and expression and the new techniques and technologies pertinent to designing, conveying and elaborating images.

In every area of the market, image is today’s main vehicle for conveying values and meanings: it is used to communicate about widely different areas of production, such as fashion, industrial design and advertising, but also culture, politics and topics of social concern.

The way that a concept or a project is presented visually is anything but an accessory: it makes a decisive contribution to ensuring that a message is communicated successfully.

To act professionally and expertly in this field calls for an eclectic, cross-cultural background based on extensive knowledge on the one hand of the socio-cultural context where the visual designer is operating and, on the other, of the new information technologies that never cease changing the role played by imaging in communications.

The language of images is a tool for setting trends, creating fashion, doing research and conducting experiments.

IED Visual Arts is devoted to the culture of the image as a focal element of communications and trains professionals to make their way with competence and certainty in the world of the media.

It is a complete training experience that enables students to familiarise and experiment directly with all the techniques and tools of visual communications, both conventional and digital. These courses are tailored for high-school leavers, young graduates and professionals who want to improve their skills.

Visual arts school in Barcelona, Olla campus

IED Barcelona is housed in an old example of totally refurbished industrial archaeology, a building that used to be a chocolate factory in the neighbourhood of Gracia, one of the most characteristic and “alternative” areas in this eternally active, dynamic city.

The building covers an area of about 1,900 m², featuring a central block that now houses the lecture theatres and a related but independent structure used for cultural events, meetings, round tables and exhibitions open to the general public.

The campus also has two further 300 m² facilities, which are home to its media library, several laboratories, workshops and the IED Showcase space, where shows of the best work created by students alternate with those of design professionals.

The school’s strong links with the fabric of local enterprise and the distinctly international vocation, both of IED itself and of the host city, have naturally generated a special focus on new technologies as an element of connection and interchange with the professional world in Italy and the rest of Europe and the development of an eLearning platform as a tool for integrating and further exploring the activities undertaken in the classroom.