MFA Panel

Ryan Clifford, MFA Candidate, MICA

Joseph Galbreath, 2nd year MFA candidate, MICA

The Graphic Design MFA program at MICA focuses on developing students through exploration, experimentation and investigation. Graphic design is viewed as an art of engagement- a visual, intellectual and communal experience. Led by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips, the GD MFA program publishes books, works with visiting designers, critics and educators, engages in various forms of manufacturing and encourages all forms of design exploration. Students focus on personal interests while informing their own point-of-view through discussion, reflection and group projects. The studio creates both popular and academic materials that educate and engage a broad range of audiences.

We read, we write and we make stuff.

Pamela Napier

In the Graduate Design program at Indiana University Herron School of Art and Design, we apply interdisciplinary collaboration, process knowledge and process skills for creative and innovative problem solving. These processes and skills are implemented to not only frame problems in unframed “fuzzy” environments, but also to help to shape and influence society.

Luke Johnson, MFA Candidate
Media Design Program, Art Center

I am not a “traditional” design student. I received my undergraduate degree in both pre-med and political science. And before attending the Media Design Program (MDP) at Art Center, I spent the past two years teaching art to inner city students in Washington DC.

What makes the MDP unique is that embraces students who are relatively new to design but have other training and life experience. This wide range of interests complements a curriculum that challenges its students to consistently work across a range of media platforms. As a result, thesis projects are as diverse as geodesic dome that reveals poetry with the passing daylight to a human-centered case study aimed to improve medication safety.

Vida Kluko, MFA candidate, Miami International University MIUO, scheduled for graduation 12/2008.

Most of my MFA classmates are graphic design instructors at Universities who need an MFA to continue teaching.

Marty Lane & Rebecca Tegtmeyer
Masters of Graphic Design, North Carolina State University

“Audience, Context, AND FORM… oh my!”

The graduate program at NC State is a two-year program, with a three-year track available for those students who do not have an accredited degree in Graphic Design. The two-years, or four semesters, are categorized by umbrella topics: Design as a Cultural Artifact, New Information Environments, Design as a Cognitive Artifact, and the Final Project.

Erik Evenson, MFA, The Ohio State University

Under the direction of noted design researcher Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, Ph.D, a group of MFA students and one undergraduate student conducted a user-centered research process for development of a prototype board game to teach disease-management skills to children with diabetes.