Designers persuade, inform and delight through visual means. Today's designers also offer guidance to sophisticated clients and develop design strategies and tactical approaches to meet a spectrum of needs and challenges across business, social, and cultural territories. Through a mixture of training and experience in visual communication design centered on typography, the program develops students' abilities to shape and solve problems, while expanding technical and visual skill sets across industry-relevant media, materials, and environments.
Because designers are increasingly called-upon to communicate and collaborate across a diverse range of cultures, markets, and industries, students are also encouraged to enhance their intellectual, creative, and conceptual problem-solving capabilities through study in areas such as writing, business, art and art history, economics, philosophy, marketing, architecture, ethics, history, and sociology, for example.
The K-State MFA program with emphasis in Graphic Design, consists of three intensive and exploratory years of thinking and making. It is structured to support passionate, driven candidates wishing to embark on advanced investigations in design-related areas. Program graduates are well-prepared to pursue positions of leadership as design thinkers, makers and problem-solvers.
Over the course of the program, graduate students develop a personalized and unique direction in their work that culminates in a third-year capstone design project and exhibition. MFA candidates pursue areas of interest through in-depth independent study with departmental faculty and a cross-disciplinary graduate committee, selected by each student in consultation with their major professor. Design MFA students are allocated secure studio space in Willard Hall, as well as access to the rest of the Art Department facilities.
