Graphic Design

Graphic design clarifies, educates, directs, and beautifies—it informs the everyday object with a visual consciousness.

[ BA DEGREE ]

Visual Arts majors who choose a BA degree track will develop a general competence in the understanding, appreciation, and practices of visual arts. Each track is designed to serve students who are interested in a degree in the visual arts, but are unable or choose not to pursue a BFA degree, and who plan to enter professions within this field or pursue other paths that require artistic skill and knowledge, clear thinking, intellectual maturity, and aesthetic awareness. It is also designed to develop skills and nurture habits of thought and appreciation that will provide a source of life-long personal satisfaction to the student.

[ BFA DEGREE ]

Graphic design as a discipline holds a rather unique and fascinating position in the world of aesthetic creation and study. As a tool to convey information to a mass audience, it is praised for its ability to clarify, educate, direct, and beautify; as an artistic medium, it is attractive because it holds possibilities for the student to manipulate a world of images, signs, and structures. Graphic design is responsible for informing the everyday object or common piece of information with a visual consciousness, for enlightening the mind of its audience, and for dismantling the usual social barriers that often prohibit an aesthetic experience in the everyday.

Books, magazines, posters, billboards, films, Web sites, product packaging etc., are the objects of the everyday, and as they are designed with artistic consideration, a complex identity and thought process begins to emerge and resonate within the consumer. A meaningful experience with the object, attained through thoughtful design, lay at the heart of the graphic design program.

In order for students to learn the concepts and skills required to achieve such an experience in their design, they are introduced to a healthy source of ideas and questions that expand their minds to analyze, research, and organize information. These creative thinking skills are then challenged and strengthened by giving students assignments that are geared toward an outcome at the professional level. Magazines, books, corporate identity, posters, motion graphics, and logos all result as creative solutions to complex communication problems that are identified and discussed in each course.

Instructors, who themselves are prominent designers in the area, easily relate the professional experience to students in the classroom and offer invaluable insight on all aspects of the industry. To enhance the learning environment and to open further opportunity for students, visiting artists are brought in to discuss their work and successes in the field and to give advice and encouragement to students striving to achieve a professional level of work. Other extra-curricular opportunities aid students in becoming progressively responsible for their work and individual artistic voice.