2024-2025 Catalog 
    
    Dec 05, 2024  
2024-2025 Catalog

Design Major


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The program integrates coursework in graphic design, digital media design, and environmental design into a dynamic interdisciplinary studio concentration. By practicing design in an expanded field, students gain comprehensive experience with a wide range of process-oriented skills, including conceptual development, visual rhetoric, formal experimentation, and critical thinking.

Program Learning Outcomes


Students will:

  • Apply skills to generate design work through methodologies of process, production, and experimentation
  • Synthesize design research and scholarship in history, theory and criticism
  • Demonstrate fluency with diverse media and their accompanying technologies, along with the ability to accommodate new technologies as they emerge
  • Articulate the role of design and the function of the designer as a leader in the social, cultural, and political landscape
  • Engage in the practice of design professionalism and collaboration

Major Requirements (49 units)


Optional Elective


The 1-unit Art + Architecture lecture series does not count towards program requirements.

Degree Planner


First-Year


Fall Units
ART 140 - Design Fundamentals    4
Core - F: ART 110 - History of Western Design   4
ART 104 - Fabrication Lab   1
Core or Language - Course 1 4
Core: Rhetoric and Composition 4
Total Semester Units 17
Spring Units
ART 155 - Visual Communication   4
ART 102 - Survey/Western Art History 2   4
Core or Language - Course 2 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 16

Sophomore Year


Fall Units
ART 205 - Typography     4
ART 272 - Design for the Web   4
Core or Language - Course 2 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 16
Spring Units
ART 315 - Digital Media Design   4
Core 4
Core 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 16

Junior Year


Fall Units
Upper Division Design Studio Elective 4
Upper Division Design Seminar Elective 4
Core 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 16
Spring Units
Upper Division Design Studio Elective 4
Core 4
Core 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 16

Senior Year


Fall Units
ART 480 - Prof Practice in Design   2
Elective 4
Optional Additional Elective 4
Core 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 18
Spring Units
ART 450 - Design Internship   2
ART 460 - Senior Design Thesis   4
Elective 4
Optional Additional Elective 4
Core 4
Total Semester Units 18

*This information is subject to change, the degree planner is a sample, and students should consult with the department for any updated information. 

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