British student wants to study in North America

Both I guess. I don't know anything about studying abroad and I want to know what my options are.

I would speak to your school's exchange officer (or whatever the equivalent is) about exchanges for credit. A few of the best design schools in the US are (IIRC) http://www.risd.edu/ (RISD, pronounced RIZ-dee), http://www.parsons.edu/ (in NYC), http://www.saic.edu/. I'm sure there are more major ones I'm not thinking of. Full tuition at any of these will be quite expensive.

Well, uh, I'm not sure exactly what information you want, but as for Canadian schools, the following have good reputations (although I'm not sure about graphics, specifically), in roughly descending order: NSCAD Emily Carr Institute OCAD York, despite boasting about it's "fine arts" department, has a crap reputation; Concordia is known to be pretty decent, but isn't as focused on arts as any of the above, being that it's a relatively well-rounded university, not a college/institute. As for 'in the least boring location,' it's probably OCAD (Toronto, Canada's biggest city) or Emily Carr (Vancouver). The benefits of going to Canada is: even with the foreign students tuition screw-over, it will be cheaper than going to the States. In Ontario right now, the average province for provincial residents is anywhere from 5000 to 7000 dollars for ever two semesters; for foreign students, it's 16 000. Contrast this with reports of tuition going for well over 25 000 US dollars/year for some American art students. And this was back when the American dollar was still strong, meaning that the discrepancy is even higher than than you'd think. Go talk to the exchange admin at your college. It will help.