The Graphic Design MFA program at CalArts has historically encouraged experimentation and innovation in the field of graphic design, testing the boundaries of what professional practice might be.

We develop makers and thinkers who go on to shape design culture.

Weirdcore: The Unfamiliar Familiar, Freeze Shi

Two Lines Aligned, Ashleigh Kawaoka

Tool-Form, Jerry Qian

Reconstructing Grid, Freeze Shi

Don't Blink, Val Costa

Program Overview

MFA students in Grad Seminar I with professor Yasmin Khan Gibson.

The Graphic Design Program emphasizes formal and conceptual skills, and enables each designer to integrate a command of visual language with imagination, research, theory and technology.

Students experience a broad range of graphic design platforms and media: print design; UI/UX and visual design for web and mobile applications; design for XR and AR; experience design; motion graphics; branding and identity; and type design.

Classes in Graphic Design are small, intimate and critique-based, fostering debate and discussion. An inclusive, participatory studio culture is central to the structure of the program with all students working in residence in communal studios.

We embrace typographic experimentation
alongside research, craft, technology & historical knowledge

Program Philosophy

Students on a field trip to the MAK Schindler House for Lorraine Wild's Historical Survey of Graphic Design class.

Learn how to articulate, develop and apply your design agenda to projects in dialogue with a larger social context.

Work fearlessly and independently. Produce work that is rigorous, ingenious, and aware of its context. Demonstrate a reckless commitment to your ideas.

Intrepidly, rigorously, develop a body of work that reflects a sustained commitment to your individual interests and priorities in the field of graphic design.

Practicing thinking through making as well as making through thinking

In other words…understand

1.
What you want to do
2.
Why you want to do it
3.
Who you want to do it for
4.
Whether it works… (and how it works)
5.
Whether it’s interesting or worthwhile
or engaging to anyone besides yourself
(and you had fun doing it)

Our Candy Wrappers, Vesper Ji

Styling Media, Ingrid Yu-Ju Tai

Encyclopedia of Postnatural Artifacts, Helen Xie

Fortochka, Dariia Zamrii

Seed Step, Val Costa