“We prepare designers for a world in which virtually anythingfrom sensor networks to interactive surfaces to entire citiesmay be the next medium or platform of communication. We offer an educational experience for individuals who relish a complex challenge.”
Degree: Master of Fine Arts
Art Center’s graduate program in Media Design offers a two- or three-year Master of Fine Arts curriculum that helps ambitious designers from a variety of backgrounds become design leaders and researchers in emerging fields.
We are looking for risk-takers with hybrid interests who can integrate innovative design with intellectual investigation, who can synthesize theory and practice, and who can pursue their research and making with depth, intelligence, empathy, and passion. With a reputation for defining new practices, we’re big on invention.
We offer two tracks: Media Design Projects (MDP) and Media Design Matters (MDM).
In the Media Design Projects track, students work in a studio context, using design to pose questions through applied and speculative projects that engage with emerging communication technologies and cultural practices.
In the Media Design Matters track, students work in a real-world context where social issues, media infrastructure, and communication technology intersect. The track is run in collaboration with Designmatters, Art Center’s social impact department.
Both tracks foster inquiry through designing, an understanding of the social aspects of media and technology, an appreciation for disciplinary hybridity and cross-cultural understanding, an ethos of scrappy entrepreneurialism (DIY resourcefulness), and a belief that critical reflection is at the core of an engaged design practice.
Our students are guided by a core faculty comprised of experts in the fields of design research, computing and civic media, media design, interaction design, graphic design, anthropology and social justice, and architecture. We challenge our students to push design in new directions within a context of cultural and technological change. Our graduates have the agility and skills to bring design to diverse situations, from scientific research labs to futurist think tanks, from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits to leading corporations and design studios.
In 2009, our department moved into a 14,000-square-foot former supersonic wind tunnel at Art Center’s South Campus. A dramatic setting conducive to inspiration and experimentation, this dedicated space houses our students’ workstations, a digital lab and the Wind Tunnel gallery.
Find out more about our department at artcenter.edu/MDP.
