:: Graphics Design Degrees
The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines (performing arts, conceptual art, textile arts) involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art.
Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' was often restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts.
Today, the term design is widely associated with the applied arts as initiated by Raymond Loewy and teachings at the Bauhaus and Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm) in Germany during the 20th century.
The boundaries between art and design are blurred, largely due to a range of applications both for the term 'art' and the term 'design'. Applied arts has been used as an umbrella term to define fields of industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, etc. The term 'decorative arts' is a traditional term used in historical discourses to describe craft objects, and also sits within the umbrella of applied arts. In graphic arts (2D image making that ranges from photography to illustration), the distinction is often made between fine art and commercial art, based on the context within which the work is produced and how it is traded.
To a degree, some methods for creating work, such as employing intuition, are shared across the disciplines within the applied arts and fine art.
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures (sometimes) and advertising. They are also sometimes responsible for typesetting, illustration, user interfaces, and web design. A core responsibility of the designer's job is to present information in a way that is both accessible and memorable.
A Bachelor's degree or certificate from an accredited trade school is usually considered essential for a graphic design position. After a career history has been established, though, the graphic designer's experience and number of years in the business are considered the primary qualifications. A portfolio, which is the primary method for demonstrating these qualifications, is usually required to be shown at job interviews, and is constantly developed throughout a designer's career.
One can obtain an AAS, BA, BFA, BCA, MFA or an MPhil / PhD in graphic design. Degree programs available vary depending upon the institution, although typical U.S. graphic design jobs may require at least some form of degree.
California Institute of the Arts
Program in Graphic Design
Maine College of Art
Undergraduate program in Graphic Design (BFA)
Massachusetts College of Art & Design
Graphic Design undergraduate program (BFA)
Parsons School of Design, New York
Undergraduate Type Design
Portland State University
Intro Level Type Design Course
Pratt Institute
School of Art and Design
Rhode Island School of Design
1 Undergraduate and Masters Introduction to Type Design course
Savannah College of Art and Design
1 type face design undergraduate, 3 graduate level typeface design classes and 1 typeface marketing
School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York
Continuing Education course in Type Design
The Art Institute of California – Orange County (AiOC), California
1 Undergraduate advanced typography course
University of Washington School of Art
The Visual Communication Design Program
Yale School of Art
Letterform/Type Design
California College of the Arts
One class on typeface design, offered as an investigative studio in junior year
Type West at Letterform Archive
A year-long postgraduate certificate in typeface design grounded in the Letterform Archive collection of over 50,000 specimens from type and design history
Select from the following list of current Design Degrees:
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