Digital Design
The goal of undergraduate design education in the School of Design is to provide a foundation that will allow graduates to deal with diverse professional challenges appropriately and to master tools and media of the future. This foundation has three components
- an integrated twelve quarter curriculum, rather than a collection of courses, concentrating on the design process rather than product,
- one and one-half years of supervised experience in the design field through the professional practice (co-op) program
- a structured liberal-arts education
About the Program
Digital Design focuses on the design of digitally mediated environments and experiences. It is distinguished by being created for people to experience on computers in digital processing environments and other time-based media. It involves interactive, malleable, and motion message development, expanding to two-way communication in which the content can respond, adapt, and change in response to user, host or outside circumstances. Motion allows form and content to utilize the added dimension of time to their communicative capacity, while sound provides additional sensory capabilities. The Digital Design program offers students the opportunity to explore design within the computing environment, from 2D and 3D animation to design for interactive media and network systems. Digital designers, through this extensive design education, coupled with knowledge of computer programming and software capabilities, are prepared to work in a variety of capacities in the digital design profession. They are most likely to work for digital design firms to develop structural and functional information architecture for interactive and immersive environments. Additionally, they may create visualizations of information, short videos, animations, and virtual reality applications such as real time product development and building fly-throughs.
Students spend their first year in Foundation Studies, which provides a concentrated study of rudiments related to optical and tactile sensations that intensify perception. The focus of these studies concerns formal and fundamental concepts of two- and three-dimensional organization. Emphasis is placed on the ingredients of process: inquiry, analysis, comparison, evaluation, and a language. The studies are an introduction to tools, methods, and materials, including development of basic technical ability. The chronological order of courses provides a continual linear experience through a carefully planned analytical sequence of interlocking components.
As students progress in the Digital Design curriculum, they begin to assimilate meaning with form. They will study a diverse array of communication concepts, from digital imaging and typographic form to motion and 3D form building. Courses are highly structured and balanced between technological expertise and visual design mastery. Students gradually progress within the program through carefully structured investigations of form to more independent research and professional solutions.