The BS in Design (Visual Communication Design) is a liberal arts design studies program with a studio orientation. Specific objectives include providing technical skills for effective visual communication and a breadth of experiences connecting graphic design to general studies in the arts and humanities, the natural and physical sciences, or the social sciences. The program prepares students for interdisciplinary research or careers requiring design understanding, or for entry into graduate school.
The BS program can accommodate a second liberal arts major, a minor, or a study abroad experience.
Students develop technical competence, informed aesthetic judgment, and skills for collaborative visual production on interdisciplinary teams. Students learn to develop meaningful visual solutions for culturally diverse audiences and situations. The liberal arts framework enables students to develop critical thinking, research, and communication skills necessary to support informed design solutions.
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will:
1. Attain competency in studio practice / technical skills:
- Attain competency in composing the elements of art with the principles of design
- Develop technical skills in a range of mediums and design applications related to the visual communication design field
2. Develop conceptual process in problem solving abilities for visual communication:
- Acquire abilities to develop creative strategies to visual communication problems, understand message hierarchies, typography, aesthetics, composition and the construction of meaningful images
- Understand and effectively use graphic design terminology
- Application of interdisciplinary approaches to visual production
3. Analyze design with regard to cultural context:
- Achieve a broad understanding of diverse issues and contexts for design
- Understand and apply knowledge of significant historical and contemporary achievements in graphic design
- Make connections between design studies and a breadth of general studies
- Students will show respect for all forms of diversity, practice inclusivity, and engage in a continual process of education and critical self-reflection and dialogue
4. Students in the Art and Design Department will show respect for all forms of diversity, practice, inclusivity, and engage in a continual process of education and critical self-reflection & dialogue. Students will be able to:
- Acknowledge that individuals of diverse racial & ethnic, gender & sexuality, religious, class & cultural backgrounds create art.
- Recognize that artmaking is an expressive practice comprising not only individual perspectives, narratives and experiences but also cultural, social, economic and political issues.
- Synthesize knowledge from multiple disciplines including diverse traditional and contemporary art movements with their own artistic and/or scholarly vision to create unique and meaningful works of art, design or scholarship.
- Analyze, reflect upon, discuss and/or write about their own and others’ works of art and design using culturally sensitive and inclusive language.
- Understand the ways in which traditional art associations (including collections, apprentice workshops, museums, galleries and academies) embody institutionally biased practices.
- Assess the symbiotic dialogue between artists and their culture, recognizing that they both reflect and influence each other.
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