The Visual Communication Design department encourages students to actively engage their world and define their role as contributing designers by developing their critical and analytical skills, personal voice, and visual language. The department cultivates a sense of social responsibility and inquiry in student designers who will be working at the intersection of art, design, and mass culture.
Visual Communication Design
Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni
A large faculty of recognized practicing designers, writers, and theorists teach a broad offering of courses in design principles, issues, theory, methodologies, processes, technology, and practice. Students develop their role as designers, authors, critics, and citizens, expanding their conceptual, critical, and organizational abilities in the process. Our extensive technical, advising, and administrative staff further the creation and assessment of each student’s unique body of work.
Our students are consistently represented in national design competitions and publications, while our alumni are designing, exhibiting, and teaching at leading studios and institutions across the country and beyond.
Course Offerings
Our diverse course offerings include both physical and virtual design areas:
- Artists' books design
- Book design
- Environmental graphics
- Exhibition design
- Font /typography Design
- Information design
- Interaction design/interface design
- Identity design/strategic design
- Illustration/imagery design
- Letterpress printing and book binding
- Motion graphics design
- Offset printing/digital printing
- Packaging design
- Poster design
- Publication design
- Sustainable design
- Symbol design
- Website design/cross-platform design
Visiting Designer Lecture Series
Each year the Department of Visual Communication Design hosts Exploratory Languages, a lecture series featuring leading designers and design educators from across the country. Recent and upcoming visiting designers include:
- Henk van Assen
- Michelle Bowers
- Kate Bingaman Burt
- Philip Burton
- Anne Bush
- David Dunlap
- Paul Elliman
- Diane Gromala
- Information Design Alliance
- Terry Irwin
- Elle Luna
- Marcia Lausen
- Warren Lehrer
- Andrea Marks
- Katherine McCoy
- Stuart McKee
- Franc Nunoo Quarcoo
- Harry Pearce
- Sol Sender
- Hu Hung Shu
- Mark Addison Smith
- Rick Valicenti
- Martin Venezky
- Lorraine Wild
- Karen Zimmerman
- Philip Zimmerman
