Design Degrees Online

Graphic design is an interdisciplinary, cross-media field that is rooted in the fine arts. Design is a public form of art that engages commercial, political, social, technological, and cultural systems. MFA students are encouraged to view themselves as cultural producers who actively initiate projects. The program provides advanced students and qualified designers with skills and knowledge to successfully compete nationally and internationally and to contribute to the public discourse of design.

MICA’s MFA in graphic design serves as an advanced lab for interdisciplinary research and exploration within the context of one of the nation’s top art colleges. The 60-hour curriculum engages students in a mix of critical seminars, guided studio courses, and independent work. Students can take advantage of electives in many MICA departments, including video, printmaking, and digital media.

As graphic design extends its reach into new media and new environments, designers are confronted with exciting intellectual and technological challenges. MICA’s MFA in graphic design offers an invaluable opportunity for advanced students and working designers to extend and refresh their work Ð technically, critically, and creatively. The two-year program provides a setting in which to develop critical ideas about the history, future, and social uses of visual communication.

Each semester, students work together in a six-hour studio with the program’s lead faculty. The studio addresses real-world issues and projects in a practical and direct yet critical and open-minded way. Designers are encouraged to be “practical visionaries” and “utopian entrepreneurs.” In the second year, the core studio provides a setting for developing a major thesis project. In addition to the core studio, each semester, students take a special seminar in graphic design, one humanities course, and an advanced studio elective drawn from across the college’s graduate and under-graduate offerings.

Full-time faculty, artists-in-residence, and visiting faculty provide challenging perspectives. Students are expected to create work that is professional both in its execution and its real-world application. Whether the work at hand involves publications, websites, products, or exhibitions, students focus on advancing a personal vision and public message.

Such interdisciplinary work is reinforced by the program’s location in MICA’s Brown Center. The presence of other media-oriented programs in the Brown Center - including video, animation, and interaction design and art Ð encourage collaborative, cross-disciplinary exploration, as well as mastery of the emerging media that are at the core of professional practice in graphic design.

Students in the graphic design MFA program seek to contribute substantial new projects and ideas to the field of visual communication. They are engaging in the cultural, social, technological, and aesthetic issues that are transforming today’s media and information industries. The 60-credit MFA program is designated to be completed during two years of full-time study, 15 credits per semester. Professional internships can be used for studio elective credit.

The Whole Systems Design program helps you to become a designer and leader of deep systemic change. It emphasizes relationships between personal, community, organizational, economic, social and ecological issues. You understand these issues from a systems perspective and focus on preferred sustainable futures as a way of transcending constraints.

An M.A. in Whole Systems Design primes you to go beyond narrow problem definitions and the status quo. You approach situations in terms of their contexts, interrelationships and dynamics. Then, you imagine and create new possibilities and work with others to design integrated approaches to problem solving.

The M.A. in Whole Systems Design is one of the graduate degrees offered by the Center for Creative Change.

Maybe you’re searching for a way to find out if graduate school is what you’d like to pursue. Perhaps you have a bachelor’s or master’s degree and want to hone your leadership skills and do some serious networking. Consider a graduate-level certificate in systems thinking and design.

Chris Fontana, 1998 Whole Systems Design graduate and Global Visionaries founder, is the 2007 Antioch University Seattle Distinguished Alumnus. To view a video of Fontana’s speech to the graduating class of 2007 and hear him talk about applying what he learned at Antioch, go to the Distinguished Alumni page.

Overview of Graphic Design (MFA)
Maryland Institute College of Art

The MFA program approaches graphic design as an interdisciplinary, cross-media field that is rooted in the fine arts. Design is a public form of art that engages commercial, political, social, technological, and cultural systems. MFA students are encouraged to view themselves as cultural producers who actively initiate projects. The program provides advanced students and qualified designers with skills and knowledge to successfully compete nationally and internationally and to contribute to the public discourse of design.

Led by director Ellen Lupton and associate director Jennifer Cole Phillips, MICA’s MFA in graphic design serves as an advanced lab for interdisciplinary research and exploration within the context of one of the nation’s top art colleges. The 60-hour curriculum engages students in a mix of critical seminars, guided studio courses, and independent work. Students can take advantage of electives in many MICA departments, including video, printmaking, and digital media.

As graphic design extends its reach into new media and new environments, designers are confronted with exciting intellectual and technological challenges. MICA’s MFA in graphic design offers an invaluable opportunity for advanced students and working designers to extend and refresh their work—technically, critically, and creatively. The two-year program provides a setting in which to develop visual forms and languages in an experimental mode, and to explore critical ideas about the history, future, and social uses of visual communication.

Each semester, students work together in a 6-hour studio with the program’s lead faculty, Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole-Phillips. The studio addresses real-world issues and projects in a practical and direct yet critical and open-minded way. Designers are encouraged to be “practical visionaries” and “utopian entrepreneurs.” In the second year, the core studio provides a setting for developing a major thesis project. In addition to the core studio each semester, students take a special studio seminar in graphic design, one humanities course, and an advanced studio elective. Full-time faculty, artists-in-residence, and visiting faculty provide challenging perspectives. Students are expected to create work that is professional both in its execution and its real-world application. Whether the work at hand involves publications, Web sites, products or exhibitions, students will focus on advancing a personal vision and public message.

In collaboration with MICA’s Center for Design Thinking, GD MFA students contribute to major publications about graphic design and participate in a variety of public research projects. Books to date include D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006), Graphic Design: The New Basics (2008), Indie Publishing: How to Design and Publish Your Own Book (2008), and Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field (2009). Students work on these and other publications for studio credit as well as in fellowship arrangements. Addtional opportunities for public engagement occur through MICA’s Center for Desig Practice, directed by GD MFA alum Mike Weikert.

Each GD MFA student has a dedicated work carrel in the the award-winning Brown Center as well as access to equipment in MICA’s Graduate Lab and Art Tech Center. Students in the graphic design MFA program seek to contribute substantial new projects and ideas to the field of visual communication. They are engaging the cultural, social, technological, and aesthetic issues that are transforming today’s media and information industries.

The 60-credit MFA program is designed to be completed during two years of full-time study, 15 credits per semester. Professional internships can be used for studio elective credit.

Program Objectives
The role of design, and indeed the role of designers, has been becoming increasingly important and influential in the 21st century. Since the world is changing rapidly in nearly every direction, the Master’s Program of Design was designed to train students through the study and application of economic, technological and cultural point of views. Designers in particular, have to come to appreciate their role and responsibility in a society that is becoming increasingly information and knowledge oriented.

We see designers as visionaries, critical thinkers, and vital members not only of corporations but also of communities. Designers as concept builders and strategists will create and shape a wide range of cultural trends. The Master’s Program of Design, established in April 2006, offers specialization across a wide spectrum design field subjects. Through course work and practical research the program aims to develop qualified creative designers who will have the power to contribute to the needs of the 21st century. The foundation of this program rests on a deep insight into the structure of culture, society, economics and environmental issues.

Ceramics

The Mission of the Kent State University Ceramics Department is to give interested students a place to learn and develop their artwork. It is partly the craft of clay that is our focus. This is the science and alchemy of clay, glaze, firing and it’s functional uses.

It is also the intellectual pursuit of making ceramic art. This incorporates one of oldest technologies used by humans. Objects, vessels and sculpture have been made since prehistoric times. They are fashioned with the most common and mysterious of materials that comes from the earth. It is then transformed by heat and fired into stone.

Students are encouraged to find new ways with clay and produce contemporary work with a foundation in history. This idea of history is not only based in just the american arena but in a more universal understanding of the differences and similarities of world ceramics.

Kent State University Ceramics Department attracts a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students from the around the country and from abroad. The ceramic lab is a place to experiment, create and discuss working with clay as an artistic medium. A wide variety of materials and firing techniques are employed by the students. Their individuality as people, visionaries and artists is our greatest concern.

Kirk Mangus, Professor, Head of Ceramics