There will be a new curriculum for Media students to start in August 2013. The Degree Programme in Media (Tampere, in English) and the Degree Programme in Media, Digital Sound and Commercial Music (Virrat, in Finnish) will merge for the new students to be admitted in 2013.
The new Degree Programme in Media will run in English in Tampere.

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The new curriculum will be approved by the board of Tampere University of Applied Sciences in February 2013. The essential content you can find behind the links:
The 2013 draft syllabus
The 2013 draft curriculum (headlines)

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What you learn in the Media Programme 
The students learn about current media issues exploiting two main study paths: Interactive Media and Music Production.
The main study paths are divided into sub study paths, (e.g Game design, Music business) and choosing studies across other main or sub study paths is possible. The curriculum contains also large shared parts and projects between these study paths and the other Degree Programmes of TAMK Art, Music and Media department.

The students will be able to grow as experts, developers and entrepreneurs both in Finland and abroad.
The studies aim at competences required for professions in one or more of the following areas of application: web design and services, game design, computer-generated imagery (CGI), production and content design, music production and music business, song writing, sound design, event production and cultural export.

The objective is that the graduate:

• Is capable of creative and applicable solutions
• Masters the articulation, working methods and technology of her/his speciality
• Is able to act professionally in the typical communication and interaction situations of the field
• Can design and head media productions and act as member of a team
• Has the competence to enter both domestic and international labour markets as a professional and as an entrepreneur

The present (2012) curricula can be found here:
Degree Programme in Media
Degree Programme in Media, Digital Sound and Commercial Music
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WANTED: 30 New IMPs
In August 30 new International Media Programme (IMP) students will start their studies at TAMK Finlayson campus.
The application period for Finnish UAS programmes run in English will kick off on January 7 2013. If you want to study interactive media or music production in Tampere, check this story!
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By David Marin

There is something more behind the color, the paths and the letters, all together create a story, a fresh experience to the user. This is the story of the development for the Immigrant Advice Center in Tampere  Finland.

Four months ago the opportunity to develop a new image from the Immigrant Advice Center was presented as a part of the Design Management course.

A group of students from several countries dealt with the problem and came out with one result that was officially presented in the first week of December.

It was not easy to come out with a logo that manages to include everything that the IAC was trying to convey, after several ideas we pulled it off, one logo and some applications were ready, the client was really pleased about it and also our group.

At the end, this task was a great experience for me, the highlight of my exchange studies here in Finland, one think that will live for me all my life. At the end all i can say is thank you to my teacher, my team mates and the IAC.

The author studies at Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. He did his exchange period in our International Media Programme this autumn semester.
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The teacher of the Design Management course was Simona Vitalini
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EEVI KORHONEN:
Evaluating Usability of Games
A study of four Facebook games using heuristic evaluation
Bachelor's thesis 68 pages
September 2012

Eevi Korhonen presenting her thesis at Wooga, Berlin

TAMK Degree Programme in Media (alias IMP, International/Interactive Media Programme) started in August 2009. The first students of this four year Bachelor's education are supposed to graduate in May/June next year.

Eevi Korhonen did it in three years and a half, and her final thesis review was arranged in November in a session running simnultaniously in Berlin and Tampere.

Now you can find the thesis at Theseus.fi, the Open Repository of the Universities of Applied Sciences in Finland:
http://publications.theseus.fi/handle/10024/52055

Read the report from Berlin "The first IMP thesis reviewed"
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WANTED: 30 New IMPs
The application period for Finnish UAS programmes run in English will kick off on January 7 2013. If you want to study interactive media or music production in Tampere, check this story!
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In December 2012, twenty-eight (28) proposals from twelve (12) schools were received for a corporate identity design competition, launched by The International Association of Film and Television Schools (CILECT), in search of a new visual identity and to project an image that evokes the new spirit of CILECT in the new millennium.

This design competition was initiated to be participated among students from educational institutions from around the world whom are full member school of CILECT. Being a member of this organisation, students of TAMK Media Programme were also invited to participate. The CILECT Executive Council reviewed and shortlisted six (6) applications as outright candidates for the winning prize of €1500, and students from TAMK proudly grabbed 3 spots out of them.

One of the students, Joanne NH Wong has emerged to claim the winning prize with her corporate identity design submission, based on the art direction of simplicity, parallel creativity and internationality.

"It is a pleasure to claim the winner spot and the handsome prize, after spending efforts in quite short time frame to accomplish the submission before deadline. Credit also goes to fellow mate, Josef Pacal, who was there working together and helped with some good design advice. I'd like to express appreciation of TAMK's networks that provides great channels and information to students such as posting this design competition. Indeed an excellent Christmas gift this year. Thank you!" - Joanne NH Wong

Example of new CILECT newsletter design with the new logo identity

About CILECT:
CILECT is the association of the world’s major film and television schools. Its goals are to provide a means for the exchange of ideas among member schools, and to help them understand the future of education for creative personnel in film, television, and related media. It is dedicated to the creation, development and maintenance of regional and international co-operation among its member schools, and to the encouragement of film and television training in the developing world. In the year 2012, CILECT had grown to include 159 institutions from 60 countries on five continents. www.cilect.org
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Joanne NH Wong is a TAMK International Media Programme student.
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the Degree Programme in Media students
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By Joanne NH Wong

On the 18th and 19th of December, Microsoft and Nokia Finland has collaborated to make a successful event, creating a two-day opportunity for participants to create their Windows 8 and Windows Phone application(s). Among participants are Microsoft experts, consultants, professionals, app developers, programmers, and students from TAMK.  The idea of the event is to invite participants to port (hack) their ready app from other platforms (IOS, Unity, Android or html5) to Windows 8 or Windows Phone, but participant are able to anticipate by starting from scratch within 18 hours (2 days).

Among us, the 'nerds' from Programming course had put our feet into this Hackathon together with our course lecturer, Juha Ollikainen. Under some guidance and presentation, we learnt about the new system of Windows 8 (a touch optimized system for tablets, laptops and PCs), as well as developing apps for it using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012.

Lecturer Juha shedding lights on how to use the new Windows 8 interface

The event was simultaneously happening in Konela Tampere, Turku and Oulu as well. Hence, first day in the morning we were welcomed by sandwiches and coffee, while witnessed an online meeting with other parties from Oulu and Turku. Santa Claus was on the line, too!

There were also introductions to Azure Mobile Services and presentation on NFC technology by Nokia experts. While we are focusing on developing our idea, which is to create Windows phone app for Juvenes restaurant's menu, benefiting most students, staffs and customers who liked to check menu of the Juvenes restaurant in Tampere through mobile platform. It was a brand new experience for us, the students, as we are rookie in such skills and expertise. Our lecturer, Juha handled the crucial programming job while we pick up from tutorials and designing the visuals of the app.

Working hard

Meals are catered for all participants and us, the students are very happy with our free breakfast, lunch and dinner! There are also experts and consultants from Microsoft who gave us advice and consultations during our app developing process, such as how to use certain features with Blend (Microsoft Visual Studio).

On the second day, we continued to our app developing process until lunch time. And then presentation of apps by participants took place in the Konela premises. There are many interesting ideas and apps presented, and there are prizes to be given away to the best ideas and executions. Unfortunately we did not win anything for our app design, but we are glad to witness others ideas and learned from them. The winner app is 'Tuesto Timer', which is an app associated with food and recipe. It has an interesting feature which user can learn how to cook their steak perfectly by flipping them on the virtual stove on their phone. Some other participants won consolation prizes, too.

Winner presentation

It was a wrap at 3pm, and we are very glad to have participated in this event, learning a lot from our lecturer, as well as building great interest in app developing skills. We looked forward to learn more about using Blend program in the near future.

Participated students from 12IMP:
Bo Kyung Kim
Yulia Pak
Joanne NH Wong

Story and photos by Joanne NH Wong

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Joanne studies in our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about the IMPs, the Media students
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by Alicia Fernández

This year the design assignment of applicants for our Degree Programme in Media was to design or produce the End of the World Party:

Riikka Uhmavaara: Worldwide digital gathering

"Imagine the following scenario:
It just might be the case, preferably not, that the world will be coming to its end on the 21st of December 2012. A giant asteroid is hurling towards Earth, and scientists say that it is going to hit us with a probability of 50 %.
What is the human race going to do on the eve of the possible catastrophe? Organize huge parties and all kinds of events, of course!
The last day is going to be a 24-hour nonstop fiesta.
You are the either the designer or the producer or the interaction designer in charge of planning one of the events in this magnificent world-wide enterprise. This time, the banks and other sponsors are not cheap on money. You have an unlimited budget."

Markku Laskujärvi: These posters showing off HeloBox were entirely made with MS Paint

Markku Laskujärvi: These posters showing off HeloBox were entirely made with MS Paint

Here you can see images from three of the applicants. These designers were invited to the entrance exam, performed well there and have now successfully done the first semester of their four year BA studies.

Dylan Jones: The last custom culture and rock 'n' roll party on earth

Dylan Jones: The last custom culture and rock 'n' roll party on earth

Want to be admitted to Media? Report from Atlantis!

The design assignment of the 2013 pre-task is to make a visual or written or audio report from Atlantis:
"A group of scientists has found Atlantis! This is one of the biggest news stories of 2013. And where is it then? No-one knows for sure. All there is to know is that Atlantis exists in a parallel universe. Thus the already highly developed civilization has evolved for thousands of years into a totally different direction than the world that we live in.

There is an expedition to Atlantis. You, as a highly valued professional of your field, are selected to report on the culture of Atlantis. The world is waiting for your report."


FIND the pretask here

Application Period Jamuary 7 to February 12
Here please find the time table and the resources to do the application:

• TAMK application web pages are complete, see www.tamk.fi/jointapplication
• November 30: The pre-task to be submitted with the application published
• December: The national joint application web site will open at https://www.admissions.fi/
• December: Our new curriculum featuring Music Production will be launched
• January 7th application period kick off
• February 12th application closed
• Early March: invitations to Entrance Exam sent
• April 9 and 10 Entrance Exam
• The final results of the student selection will be sent to the applicants by post on May 28th at the earliest.

Read more about the Media Programme
Read about the activities of IMPs, the Media students
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By Sanna Kuisma, doing her exchange period at OCAD, Toronto

Grange Park in November - View from the school window

Toronto has welcomed me warmly and the atmosphere is great – people are friendly, helpful and polite. The city provides lots of activities from jogging at the beaches to visiting various unique stores and restaurants, characteristic neighbourhoods and opportunities to meet people from different cultures.

View from my home street - Toronto is a mixture of old brick houses and modern high-rises

During the four months I’ve been learning studio photography and UI design  as well as been experimenting with illustration and painting. I’ve learned more techniques and new tools by taking a leap not only far from Finland, but also far from my comfort zone.

Photography course work

The way of studies at OCAD is very independent - a typical course consists of a three-hour class and six hours of independent working in a week. Some course work was to be produced in fast pace, having a new assignment bi-weekly, whereas some courses only consisted of two bigger projects. High workload and tight schedule were something all courses had in common.

As well as the demanding teachers, dedicated students make the courses successful. Fellow students with different backgrounds and styles can give very useful feedback, and it’s been a pleasure to follow and be part of interesting conversations.

Some of the graffiti at the walls of OCAD – not allowed and constantly painted over

I am happy with my exchange, since I met awesome and inspiring people, got new friends and surely gained many new learnings for my future work. I can recommend OCAD for those prepared for hard work, and would encourage everyone to be active and make the most of your time abroad.


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The author is a student of our International Media Programme
Read more about student exchange

Read more stories by and about IMPs, the Media students
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Read more »

By Robert Frankó
Question: -Why in the world would you apply for a one week photo course during the autumn holiday? One week? Are you out of your mind? Waking up to get to school at 9:00 holiday time to learn only for a week about something others have been studying for decades and they still suck?

Answer: -Because you are curious, bored and the plane ticket is more expensive than you can afford. In summary, these are the thoughts I had in mind when I applied. I happen to have a DSLR camera but use it as a dummy, switching to the auto settings hoping the picture will not be a complete disaster.

Ville Salminen -former student of TAMK and professional photographer- has been asked to teach us, true dummies from sketches beginning with: How to turn on the camera. His patience seemed endless, as some of us have truly had difficulties even with such a simple method.

Monday mostly passed by putting down the basics of knowledge, the dry theory part, which was sometimes strange as a whole day was gone almost without taking a single picture. ISO, white balance, exposure, shutter speed, manual settings, single shot, focus settings, quality, RAW, jpeg, lens types... things and definitions many of us have never even heard of.

Stuffing so many information into one single day seemed so impossible, but somehow Ville managed and by the end of the day everything started to just simply make sense. Around 3pm we marched to the street and started shooting. People, faces, shoes, bricks on the wall, leaves, cigarette decks... Nothing remain unrevealed on Finlaysoninkatu. We rocked, still, we had just a fracture of idea what we are actually doing.

Tuesday was all about lights. Flash, natural light, artificial lights, reflectors, direction, strength, color, hardness, and the trinity of lights: key, fill and backlight. And about our main enemies: hard shadows. Believe it or not, by the end of the day we have been building our own studio setting creating a today's fashion light setting and we have actually been shooting studio pictures. What more: we didn't suck!!! Unbelievable... We have shot quality pictures, and some of us truly looked even better on the pictures then in real life. Amazing achievement!

Wednesday we dug even deeper, learning special techniques. First topic was light painting and I must admit, this has been such an eye candy I can't really get rid of the addiction. Was hard to believe that with a simple "entry-level" camera like my Canon 1100D I could shoot breathtaking pictures. At least they took mine away...

From the first amaze we popped into the next one: super-macro. Many of us made already macro pictures provided by the owned lenses, but never tried to step to a next level, when you try to shoot your own DNA sequence without purchasing professional equipments that cost over 10.000 Euros. Do not do it at home without parental advisory, but turning two lenses against each other and getting close enough to another person's eyeball -with his/her permission- can lead to awesome experiences.


Last but not least we had an introduction to HDR photography and panorama. Ville was amazing: in such a short time he covered so many possible technical details and things you have to be aware of.

Thursday was all about Photoshop. 72% longer eyelashes, 92% sexier look by simply modifying the size of the eyes and the iris, removing unwanted chicken pots and fixing screwed up make- ups. Simply changing the light-balance and colors to achieving artistic sets of shots without becoming a ridiculous one-in-a- billion Instagram user. We also got our assignments: Ville has shown us four individual songs on youtube, and we had to shoot three pictures inspired by the three chosen ones. Bloody hell! I just had a quick introduction to photography, and I am supposed to shoot pictures by my own? Deep water after three days... Why not? As a hungry horde we have spread all over Tampere, so that on Friday we could manipulate and introduce them to Ville and to each other. And what more? Even having them printed on expensive paper downstairs in the basement. I can only hope for Ville's sake that Cai did not hear of it from me for the first time...

So, if you are interested in how we managed and what we have achieved, please do not hesitate visiting our little exhibition at Finlayson campus Pesurumpu, better known as the entry hallway of the campus.

PS: Check out the songs that inspired us shooting the pictures! Eyes closed, see what impressions they give You!
John Myrphy - Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor)
Jack Trammell - Crushing Blow
The Servant - Cells (Instrumental)
Desireless - Voyage Voyage
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The author is student of TAMK UAS Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about the IMPs, the International Media Programme students

Just arrived to HKI.

The Print Design course of autumn 2012 made an excursion to Helsinki to visit places relevant to our interests.

These places included:
- Book publishing company Otava's HQ
- Finnish Illustrators' Association AKA Grafia
- Ateneum art museum
- Sarjakuvakeskus AKA Helsinki Comics Center

Read more »

By Emilia Kwiatkowska

The exhibition is in B-building ground floor

Day 10.12.2012 was very special for some of our Art & Media & Erasmus students. Thanks to Ruta Berzina (our exchange student from Latvia) they had a great opportunity to expose their works at the main TAMK campus (Kuntokatu 3). Ruta did this project as a part of Project management course. The opening of the exhibition called WTF Finlayson?! started at 18:00.

Our guests

We hosted our guests with wonderful pieces of art, glögi and snacks. There was a lot of very valuable conversations & feedback and of course positive energy.
Artists who exposed their works are:
Carolin Büttner – Photography
Mary Wardak - Photography and performance
Emilia Ewa Kwiatkowska - Mixed media painting and photography
Alberto Palafox – Sound art
Ruta Berzina – Sound art
Matěj Kovárník – Photography
Markku Laskujärvi - Digital print comic
Dita Maļinovska – Sound Art and Photography
Annemiek Scheele – Photography

The Exhibition is open till Thursday till 18:00 (every day 9:00-18:00) so come and enjoy!

Matěj and Mery before opening

Ruta, after long day, found time to watch carefully our works

Video made by Mary

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Emilia studies in our international Degree Programme in Media
Read more about the IMPs, the Media students
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