Motion can be used as a dynamic and interdisciplinary tool to communicate ideas and narratives that utilize time based media. The intention of this studio class is to equip students with understandings of the mechanics of motion, making and working through analysis and discussion of motion pieces, which they will then use to inform decisions, harnessing motion as a tool for presentation of their work and its documentation as well. Students will navigate motion through the 12 principles of animation, assess moving pictures across different media like live action films, traditional animation, stop motion animation, advertising and motion graphics through diverse screenings. They will also draw on their understanding of time, sequencing, narratives and techniques in their own creative practices. Students will begin with a solid foundational understanding of After Effects, be equipped with essential skills and techniques like working with hand-drawn animation, stop motion and motion graphics using text based-media. As a project focus for the course, students will work on a 45-second motion project of their choice, using vector graphics, kinetic type, or object stop motion. From pre-production to post-production, they will consider processes like storyboarding and sound in creating their visual sequences.

Elective

This Exhibition design course supports the complex and expanding roles of today’s designers and artists, and introduces students to the many facets of exhibition design, from concept development through execution. Exhibition design showcases the interdisciplinary nature of our industries, and are a powerful way to shape how stories, ideas, and objects are experienced. This course will cover topics including curatorial practice, identity design, wayfinding, exhibition & spatial design, promotional, publication catalog, and community engagement.

The class will work collaboratively to develop an exhibition that will have an opening near the end of wintersession, and will include a student-led workshop with a publication hand out. The outcomes will include two exhibitions: a larger group show in the GD Commons (TBD) and a smaller tabletop or vitrine exhibition in partnership with Fleet Library Special Collections. Especially as students prepare for senior shows and departmental exhibitions, this is an excellent opportunity to engage with all the steps of an exhibition execution. Guest critics, field trips to the RISD museum to meet with their curatorial and exhibition design teams, as well as meeting the librarians at Fleet Library will help inform our process and work. Students will engage with key questions such as: What is the narrative we are trying to share? How do we shape an audience’s experience? What role does design play in exhibition-making?

Open to Undergraduate Students

Elective

This course challenges students to rethink how they gather inspiration and conduct research for art and design practices. By engaging new sources and collaborative methods, students can creatively generate original research that counters harmful narratives, combats erasure of identity and culture, engages collective memory, celebrates personal experience, or reveals unanticipated insights about a topic, whether new or old to their practice. This course is for students of any discipline, at any stage of their academic journey. Using free tools, students will create publicly accessible, participatory web archives. Students will create surveys, and activate online and in-person networks to gather submissions around a topic of their choosing.

Students will learn to connect their surveys to HTML, enabling responses to auto-populate a website they design. No previous coding experience required. The course combines studio practice, lectures, readings, and discussions. Students will be introduced to key figures such as Mindy Seu, Chia Amisola, and Zoë Pulley to provide examples of how web-based archives can inform and be a part of creative bodies of work beyond the course. Students will connect the research they gather to their existing practice through an open-ended final project of any medium. Experimentation and the cultivation of a collaborative studio culture are emphasized in the classroom as students explore how situated knowledge, lived experience, and varying perspectives can be gathered, shared, and represented.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $100.00

Elective

UI/UX design is the backbone of digital experiences. It shapes how we interact with screens, transforms innovative ideas into intuitive interfaces, guides navigation through complex systems, and creates aesthetic coherence that makes technology accessible and engaging. At its core, UI/UX design bridges creativity and usability, ensuring that digital products are not only functional but also meaningful and enjoyable to use.

This workshop introduces students to the workflow and foundational knowledge of UI/UX design for smartphone applications. Using Figma as the primary tool, students will learn methodologies and tools central to app design, including researching existing forms and functionalities, translating concepts into wireframes, and developing visual aesthetics and navigation systems. In the initial sessions, students will analyze the intuitiveness and patterns of existing apps, critically assess and redefine their functionalities, and explore alternative modes of use. Subsequent sessions focus on redesigning an app by addressing existing frustrations or repurposing its intended use, creating prototypes that challenge standard user expectations, and developing high-fidelity interactive prototypes that integrate navigation and interaction design. No prior experience in UI/UX or coding is required, and coding will not be taught in this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Elective

UI/UX design is the backbone of digital experiences. It shapes how we interact with screens, transforms innovative ideas into intuitive interfaces, guides navigation through complex systems, and creates aesthetic coherence that makes technology accessible and engaging. At its core, UI/UX design bridges creativity and usability, ensuring that digital products are not only functional but also meaningful and enjoyable to use.

This workshop introduces students to the workflow and foundational knowledge of UI/UX design for smartphone applications. Using Figma as the primary tool, students will learn methodologies and tools central to app design, including researching existing forms and functionalities, translating concepts into wireframes, and developing visual aesthetics and navigation systems. In the initial sessions, students will analyze the intuitiveness and patterns of existing apps, critically assess and redefine their functionalities, and explore alternative modes of use. Subsequent sessions focus on redesigning an app by addressing existing frustrations or repurposing its intended use, creating prototypes that challenge standard user expectations, and developing high-fidelity interactive prototypes that integrate navigation and interaction design. No prior experience in UI/UX or coding is required, and coding will not be taught in this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Elective

UI/UX design is the backbone of digital experiences. It shapes how we interact with screens, transforms innovative ideas into intuitive interfaces, guides navigation through complex systems, and creates aesthetic coherence that makes technology accessible and engaging. At its core, UI/UX design bridges creativity and usability, ensuring that digital products are not only functional but also meaningful and enjoyable to use.

This workshop introduces students to the workflow and foundational knowledge of UI/UX design for smartphone applications. Using Figma as the primary tool, students will learn methodologies and tools central to app design, including researching existing forms and functionalities, translating concepts into wireframes, and developing visual aesthetics and navigation systems. In the initial sessions, students will analyze the intuitiveness and patterns of existing apps, critically assess and redefine their functionalities, and explore alternative modes of use. Subsequent sessions focus on redesigning an app by addressing existing frustrations or repurposing its intended use, creating prototypes that challenge standard user expectations, and developing high-fidelity interactive prototypes that integrate navigation and interaction design. No prior experience in UI/UX or coding is required, and coding will not be taught in this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Elective

This course explores generative processes with an emphasis on visual systems, rethinking the tools and software used to create and distribute graphic design. Through approaches such as responsive design, generative visual identities, and variable typography, we will examine how the role of the designer has shifted toward creating systems of modules, algorithms, and datasets rather than single, static outcomes.

In system-based design, with its reliance on computational tools, processes focused on automation and efficiency often make it easy to generate countless variations without meaningful intent or context. This class takes that environment as a starting point, exploring how designers can respond creatively by developing form-making methodologies that bring depth and critical reflection to computational practices.

Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is helpful. Prototyping tools and languages such as p5.js and other web programming libraries will be introduced to broaden technical skills. Alongside screen-based projects, students will also engage in physical and analog activities to expand their understanding of computational design. Weekly student-led presentations and reading discussions will further expand on relevant topics.

Elective

This course is for graduate students in Graphic Design to work independently on visual and material research. Students will explore formal outcomes related to all stages of thesis development. The instructors serve an advisory role in all projects. Students must submit a visual and written proposal during the first week of class, outlining their planned work and criteria for evaluation. Proposals can encompass phases of work development, critical making, exploration of multiple/serial outcomes, and engagement with methods and tools. Student's individual work/inquiry will be the key component of this course.

Elective

As our interfaces expand beyond their familiar boundaries, what new conceptual and expressive opportunities will emerge for written communication? Visions for “extended realities” are too often defined and constrained by big tech, with typography relegated to “clean” interfaces and chat boxes. This hands-on studio course imagines alternatives by exploring the affordances (and unruly glitches) of digital type beyond the rectangle. Combining interaction, motion, and experimental typography, we will play with type in emerging media contexts, from the cutting edge of variable web fonts to augmented and virtual realities. Over the course of workshops and larger projects, we will draw on diverse sources—including sci-fi, avant garde art and design histories, and critical texts—to develop strategies for merging type, tech, and language in new ways. Basic familiarity with HTML and CSS is recommended, but not required.

Elective

Branding is often seen as one of the more commercial corners of graphic design, but it has the potential to be an artistic practice with wide conceptual reach. A brand designer is a multidisciplinary world-builder—required to work as an illustrator, art director, typographer, web designer, and print production specialist all at once. This class will approach branding as both a pragmatic discipline and a speculative tool, with identity systems as a site for experimentation. Students will be exposed to practical skills and techniques for brand-building—how to structure and give a presentation, how to use Figma, Illustrator, Keynote and other popular branding tools—while also being encouraged to push beyond conventional expectations of what a brand can be. 

The first half of the semester will center on short identity exercises built around provocative constraints. Questions like: how can an identity be generative? What if a brand were rooted entirely in historic materials? Can an identity be reimagined without changing any of its existing assets? Students will test different strategies and play with form, while learning how to balance invention with coherence. Analog and digital mediums and outcomes will be equally prioritized, and special attention will be paid to art direction as a way to extend a brand into the real world and across disciplines. In the second half, students will build on earlier experiments to develop a complete identity, from research to final guidelines and applications.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00

Elective

In this Graphic Design studio, students will learn the building blocks of book construction. In addition to handwork and bindery skills, students will work to set type, manually and digitally, to match their conceptual vision and learn to plan, execute and create well crafted book projects. The course will cover the history of the book from codexes and manuscripts all the way through modern zines to give us context for our technical work. We will study the medium of the artists’ book which, though rooted in traditional book forms, take on any shape and design that the artist can imagine. This medium has a rich history—we’ll study exemplars in the Special Collections archive and visit with contemporary artists in the field. 

Craft is essential to creating effective forms that tell the story of our design practice. How can the technical skills learned in traditional book binding be adapted to your vision and voice?

Elective

This course is for students who want to explore or further develop their understanding of typography. It will cover the study of letterforms, type classification, legibility, organization, and hierarchy, along with text applications, grid systems, and page layout. Typography will be examined as a means of communication and as a medium for experimental expression. Projects may include various studies that address text at both micro and macro levels and the creation of posters, signage, and publications. Systematic versus intuitive learning methods, or programming, will be introduced. 

Elective

This course is for students who want to explore or further develop their understanding of typography. It will cover the study of letterforms, type classification, legibility, organization, and hierarchy, along with text applications, grid systems, and page layout. Typography will be examined as a means of communication and as a medium for experimental expression. Projects may include various studies that address text at both micro and macro levels and the creation of posters, signage, and publications. Systematic versus intuitive learning methods, or programming, will be introduced. 

Elective

This course is for students who want to explore or further develop their understanding of typography. It will cover the study of letterforms, type classification, legibility, organization, and hierarchy, along with text applications, grid systems, and page layout. Typography will be examined as a means of communication and as a medium for experimental expression. Projects may include various studies that address text at both micro and macro levels and the creation of posters, signage, and publications. Systematic versus intuitive learning methods, or programming, will be introduced. 

Elective

Photography plays an important role in the field of graphic design -- within publications, posters, electronic media, etc. Because of the camera's availability and fairly inexpensive cost, photography has become one of the most popular hobbies in the world. Although he/she is in possession of such a device, the average person is not entirely aware of certain image manipulations and other concepts used by the graphic designer. This four-week workshop introduces designers to the lighting studio and the many uses of the camera in creating design artifacts.

Elective

This course is an overview of the basic principles of type design. The focus is on negative space, words, and readability. Students will gain a deeper understanding of typography and increased insight into existing typefaces.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (3yr)

This 3-credit course will teach advanced design principles of formal structures, relations, and systems to the eclectic non-GD major students entering the field of Graphic Design from other disciplines.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (3yr)

Color is a phenomenon of light and pigment and is an expressive and symbolic component of art and design. Color exists in myriad forms: as ink on paper, as pixels on computers, paint on canvas, as light on screens, and reflected off surfaces of objects both natural and man-made. Through a series of exercises and assignments, students in this class will explore the power of color-seeing color in action as well as examining and creating color relationships and operations. Students will rotate through two faculty for six weeks each, and in doing so, explore how designers utilize color and how color gets applied to surfaces. Students will develop a general understanding of color theory and applied color through observation and articulation. These techniques and skills will serve as a complement to your other required core courses. A blend of lectures, demonstrations, studio exercises, assignments, and critiques, will allow students to observe, articulate, analyze, and practice the use of color.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Color is a phenomenon of light and pigment and is an expressive and symbolic component of art and design. Color exists in myriad forms: as ink on paper, as pixels on computers, paint on canvas, as light on screens, and reflected off surfaces of objects both natural and man-made. Through a series of exercises and assignments, students in this class will explore the power of color-seeing color in action as well as examining and creating color relationships and operations. Students will rotate through two faculty for six weeks each, and in doing so, explore how designers utilize color and how color gets applied to surfaces. Students will develop a general understanding of color theory and applied color through observation and articulation. These techniques and skills will serve as a complement to your other required core courses. A blend of lectures, demonstrations, studio exercises, assignments, and critiques, will allow students to observe, articulate, analyze, and practice the use of color.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Color is a phenomenon of light and pigment and is an expressive and symbolic component of art and design. Color exists in myriad forms: as ink on paper, as pixels on computers, paint on canvas, as light on screens, and reflected off surfaces of objects both natural and man-made. Through a series of exercises and assignments, students in this class will explore the power of color-seeing color in action as well as examining and creating color relationships and operations. Students will rotate through two faculty for six weeks each, and in doing so, explore how designers utilize color and how color gets applied to surfaces. Students will develop a general understanding of color theory and applied color through observation and articulation. These techniques and skills will serve as a complement to your other required core courses. A blend of lectures, demonstrations, studio exercises, assignments, and critiques, will allow students to observe, articulate, analyze, and practice the use of color.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design