more info on applying/curriculum/facilities/faculty/visiting artists + critics

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RISD’s graduate program in Graphic Design prepares students for professional practice through a curriculum that emphasizes the roles of social context, media and aesthetics in the production of visible language systems. Like the discipline of graphic design itself, the MFA program requires a nimble and intelligent response to constant change, burgeoning technology, and floods of data — all while considering and building on well-established foundations of formal, aesthetic and analytical knowledge.

RISD offers two program tracks leading to the MFA in Graphic Design: a two-year option for students entering with undergraduate degrees in graphic design and closely related majors, and a three-year option for those with degrees in liberal arts, the sciences or fine arts. The curricula for both the two- and three-year tracks are built on a sequence of required courses along with broad opportunities for tailoring an individual course of study through electives across disciplines. The Graduate Studio sequence explores the range of skills and activities within the design process, from an initial visual/verbal response to content to the shaping and communication of messages. Students in both tracks meet in the Graduate Seminar course sequence, which builds a sophisticated sense of context through discussion of design history and contemporary critical issues, and with readings and exercises that combine written and visual work.

Individual thesis investigation is central to the final year of MFA study. The thesis is not one culminating object or artifact so much as a consistent approach to persistent ideas within a body of work — the development of an original voice for both verbal and visual expression of an area of design thinking. Guest critics — including professionals in the field — are invited to participate in the year-end thesis review, which serves as a forum for critical dialogue focused on each student’s ideas.

A core team of full- and part-time faculty extends the energy and ideas graduate students bring to the studio to encourage generative thinking and making. In addition to departmental faculty, national and international visiting designers broaden students’ awareness of resources within the larger design world and offer varied models for critical practice.