The graphic design graduate finds their home within the College of Fine Arts along with video, film, music, theater, and dance. Cross-disciplinary activity is encouraged. MFA candidates in graphic design are encouraged to diversify their exploration through interdisciplinary research.
Graphic Design shares Seigfred Hall with: printmaking (with the largest number of Bavarian limestones in the United States) along with papermaking, etching, and serigraphy; photography and integrated media, with its labs both new and traditional; ceramics, known as one of the top three ceramics research institutions; painting and drawing, offer both traditional and new-media with private studios at our Ridges’ facility; sculpture and expanded practice has one of the best foundries in the Midwest and offers an expanded practices program; art history, researching topics such as contemporary Asian cultures, gender-specific extensions in critical art discourse along with traditional art history.
With over 400 drawers of metal and wood type, large bed printing presses including a Vandercook proof press, Challenge and Nolan proof presses, Chandler and Price Platen Press, and a collection of smaller platen presses, together with a complete book bindery including press, stitching machines, and press, the Don E. Adleta Type Shop and Bindery is a space dedicated to the printed word.
Graduate Lab
The Graphic Design Graduate Lab (Seigfred 405) is a welcoming studio environment for our current graphic design MFA students. Students use this space for both class meetings as well as the studio spaces for their own artistic and design process.
Our graduate students have the opportunity to work in the College of Fine Arts’ CREATE_Space with other graduate candidates from the college. This environment is well established and is being continually advanced by the college. Graduate candidates are highly encouraged to advance their research in this lab.
Equipment available to graduate students: Apple Desktops with Adobe Suit, Risograph, Wacom Cintiq tablets, AxiDraw - pen plotter machine, laser jet printer and printing lab with several large Epson printers, Apple TVs, light boxes, projectors, and the CREATE_Space equipment check-out.