In the first two semesters of a two-year studio track, students will come into contact with issues and questions that face the contemporary designer. Students will engage with and develop methods to take on these questions: search (formal and intellectual), research, analysis, ideation, and prototyping. Projects will increase in complexity over time, sequenced to evolve from guided inquiry to more open, self-generated methodologies. Some examples of the questions students might work with are: What is graphic? or How are tools shaped by contemporary culture, technology, and convention? or How is a spatial or dimensional experience plotted and communicated? These questions will be accompanied by a mix of precedents, theoretical contexts, readings and presentations, technical and/or formal exercises and working methods.

Please contact the department for permission to register. 

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Typography III is the culmination of RISD's typography sequence, with an emphasis on typography and contemporary display platforms. Advances in software and hardware have created new opportunities for how language is written, sequenced and accessed. Projects in this semester depend on altered states, where the content, composition, and context all are potentially at play. Students will continue to develop proficiency in designing for static compositions while extending the meaning and voice of that work across multiple platforms. Students will have ample opportunity to further shape their perspective and individual voice in relation to contemporary typography. This is a studio course, so some class time will be used for discussions, most of the time we will be working in class, often on a computer. There is an expectation that students work both individually and in groups and be prepared to speak about their own work and the work of their peers in supportive and respectful ways. A laptop and relevant software are required.

Please contact the department for permission to register. 

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Students are expected to develop personal working methods and interests through more general questions posed by the faculty. Longer-term projects will be intermixed with shorter projects posed by visiting critics. Students should complete the Design Studio track with a developed sense of self, and able to start framing questions and lines of inquiries of their own. End forms will be more emphasized than in Design Studio 1 and 2, in part as evidence that craft and working methods are sufficiently evolved. The twice-a-week format is intended for juniors or advanced designers who have completed the first two semesters of Design Studio or an equivalent design principles track.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

This studio course is based on the premise that the narrative shaping of information is fundamental to human communication. As active participants in cultural production, graphic designers naturally collaborate within varied areas of expertise, assuming a documentary role in how society views itself. Narrative methods enable us to speak to (and through) any content with a sense of the story it has to tell - visually representing historical, curatorial, scientific, and abstract ideas and events. Students will explore design as a process of storytelling that includes linear and non-linear relationships, with an emphasis on developing formal strategies for multiple approaches to shaping a narrative experience from given as well as self-generated content. Particular emphasis is on sequence, framing, cause and effect, the relationships between elements, and the synthesis of parts into wholes. With text and image, and across media, we employ narrative methods to make sense of complex content meant to be shared and understood.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (2yr)