MFA Graphic Design Curriculum

 Structured as a think tank, students at varying levels work in a collaborative learning environment on a theme-based project, focusing on inquiry, research, discourse and design thinking. This four-term course will encourage a wide range of opinions, with course outcomes exploring media literacy and critical form making. Faculty will provide the opportunity for in-depth discussion and critique as well as connecting research to conceptual and formal investigation. Together students and faculty work collectively and individually to produce publishable outcomes that will contribute to design scholarship. 

In this course all graduate students discuss issues pertaining to being an active designer in the world. Lead by invited guests from various disciplines students look at design from multiple philosophic, historical, theoretical positions. The course provides an opportunity to speak at length about the value of inquiry, methodology, research/development, and being actively engaged in issues and disciplines outside graphic design. On occasion students have the opportunity to engage with Visiting Artists that may include special events or unique briefs.

Stemming from the research from Seminar Studio, Graduate Studio focuses on critical iterative process. Throughout the course students cultivate working methodologies to discover varied outcomes through working fluidly across media to investigate multiple applications of their research. With guidance and mentorship from the faculty, in this course students begin to develop a body of work reflecting their interests, agendas, and values.

This course is total emersion into the field of graphic design. Current and critically important figures be covered, students will be given tools to use in their practice to ensure that they are informed on the discipline on a global scale. In addition, students will begin to engage visiting artists in dialogue during lectures.

Design Week is a week of workshops in which visiting artists from United States and abroad lead a group of students through a short-term project. Workshops team up with Los Angeles-based organizations that serve to make a difference in small and large communities. Workshop outcomes fall somewhere between speculation and a real world design solutions with an aim to aspire all parties to apply design thinking in an innovative way.

A diversity of critical approaches to twentieth and twenty-first century design are situated historically while introducing current themes and debates in contemporary design practice and related disciplines.

Structured as a think tank, students at varying levels work in a collaborative learning environment on a theme-based project, focusing on inquiry, research, discourse and design thinking. This four-term course will encourage a wide range of opinions, with course outcomes exploring media literacy and critical form making. Faculty will provide the opportunity for in-depth discussion and critique as well as connecting research to conceptual and formal investigation. Together students and faculty work collectively and individually to produce publishable outcomes that will contribute to design scholarship.

This course is a graduate level exploration to the fundamentals of typography and typographic systems and letterforms. Students will explore the theoretical and applied use of type as visual form ans visable language by learning the nuances of type families, texture, hierarchy, grid, composition, and sequence.

A Studio Elective is any art and/or design course with visual production (not a Liberal Arts and Sciences course) that may be offered within or outside a student’s studio major. Students must meet the course’s prerequisite or co-requisite requirements, class level, or other criteria specified in the Course Description. See the Course Catalog (pdf) for a complete list of courses.

A Studio Elective is any art and/or design course with visual production (not a Liberal Arts and Sciences course) that may be offered within or outside a student’s studio major. Students must meet the course’s prerequisite or co-requisite requirements, class level, or other criteria specified in the Course Description. See the Course Catalog (pdf) for a complete list of courses.

This course is designed for graduate students that are interested in starting their own business and or freelance business. Students will be introduced to all facets of running a business, such as writing a business plan, promotion, developing a client base, pricing, legal and financial aspects as well as ethical standards. Students will be exposed to guest lectures from a variety of business areas such as small business owners, a life coach, accountant/bookkeeper and an attorney, on the proper way to set-up and run a business.

In this course students will work to contextualize their future practice through close examination of their own body of work, research, and on and off site visits with contemporary design practitioners. The course will provide opportunities to experience the many roles that designers can play today focusing on the way practice models continue to evolve in response to socio economic technological, cultural, economic and political conditions.

Structured as a think tank, students at varying levels work in a collaborative learning environment on a theme-based project, focusing on inquiry, research, discourse and design thinking. This four-term course will encourage a wide range of opinions, with course outcomes exploring media literacy and critical form making. Faculty will provide the opportunity for in-depth discussion and critique as well as connecting research to conceptual and formal investigation. Together students and faculty work collectively and individually to produce publishable outcomes that will contribute to design scholarship.

A Studio Elective is any art and/or design course with visual production (not a Liberal Arts and Sciences course) that may be offered within or outside a student’s studio major. Students must meet the course’s prerequisite or co-requisite requirements, class level, or other criteria specified in the Course Description. See the Course Catalog (pdf) for a complete list of courses.

A Studio Elective is any art and/or design course with visual production (not a Liberal Arts and Sciences course) that may be offered within or outside a student’s studio major. Students must meet the course’s prerequisite or co-requisite requirements, class level, or other criteria specified in the Course Description. See the Course Catalog (pdf) for a complete list of courses.

Structured as a think tank, students at varying levels work in a collaborative learning environment on a theme-based project, focusing on inquiry, research, discourse and design thinking. This four-term course will encourage a wide range of opinions, with course outcomes exploring media literacy and critical form making. Faculty will provide the opportunity for in-depth discussion and critique as well as connecting research to conceptual and formal investigation. Together students and faculty work collectively and individually to produce publishable outcomes that will contribute to design scholarship.

In this course all graduate students discuss issues pertaining to being an active designer in the world. Lead by invited guests from various disciplines students look at design from multiple philosophic, historical, theoretical positions. The course provides an opportunity to speak at length about the value of inquiry, methodology, research/development, and being actively engaged in issues and disciplines outside graphic design. On occasion students have the opportunity to engage with Visiting Artists that may include special events or unique briefs.

Based on the work and process documentation generated from previous 3 semesters in this course students design a narrative structure that chronicles and contains their body of work, embodies their personal agenda and begins to locate their future practice in the contemporary design landscape. The form of this final series of artifacts will be determined by the individual interests of the MFA candidates.

Design Week is a week of workshops in which visiting artists from United States and abroad lead a group of students through a short-term project. Workshops team up with Los Angeles-based organizations that serve to make a difference in small and large communities. Workshop outcomes fall somewhere between speculation and a real world design solutions with an aim to aspire all parties to apply design thinking in an innovative way.