Masters degree in Graphic Design 3D at Cranbrook Academy of Art

 

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Masters Degree in Graphic Design 3D at Cranbrook Academy of Art

Cranbrook Academy of Art
Masters degree
Graphic Design
3D

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-Degree Requirements-
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Art. Fashion. Industrial Design. Today many products defy these easy categories. We participate in a global exchange of images so vast that its impossible to locate the point where art stops and design begins. The forces of consumer capitalism have caused the previously well-defined categories of commerce, culture, technology and media to collide, blurring the lines between marketing and cultural production. Today, advertised products can be seen as one part story, one part physical experience, one part image and one part material. Clearly, the scope of design has broadened to include not only physical products, but the stories, lifestyles and experiences they embody. Ultimately, its you - the designer or artist - who must position your work in this changing landscape of ideas, audiences, and industries. It makes sense then, that you should come to understand your cultural context, your method, and the intentions of your work.

The 3D Design Department is committed to narrative research in design. This approach recognizes that today’s products should express an attitude and tell a meaningful story. Products are not ‘neutral’. Products are always ‘about’ an idea or subject. A product should communicate the cultural values of the maker. A product should present a point-of-view and an identity. Our studio looks critically at products as enablers of cultural values. For example, a car design may enable a car culture with various political, economic, ecological and aesthetic values. Designers may choose to tamper with society’s codes; mixing, mutating, and intervening in the objects, stories, and systems of material culture. We can support existing myths or offer new ones. We can align with the social order or disrupt it. We can disguise the unpleasant truth with a seductive mask. We can legitimize almost any idea with an authoritative appearance. Cranbrook designers search for product forms and stories which instigate new behaviors, perceptions, lifestyles, and cultural values.

The program is free of the formal course structure typical of most art schools and universities. Instead the studio environment is the core of the curriculum with emphasis on developing an individual body of work. The highly motivated group of students that comprise each year’s class provides a vital network of resources with which to engage in dialogue and critique. Because of this open course structure, students are strongly motivated to enter the department with a purposefulness that fuels the pursuit of independent growth. A highly charged studio environment allows individuals to work in the spirit of an ongoing experiment, with the focus on rigorous interaction among fellow designers and other Academy students.

Weekly critiques and discussion groups form the core of the department’s activities with periodic all-faculty, Academy-wide reviews. The department head consults with students to build individual programs based on their specialized goals and interests. In response to student needs, faculty coordinate projects that vary in duration and conduct reading and discussion groups with students. Additionally, designers and critics of national and international stature visit the department to conduct critiques and occasionally assign short-term projects.

The work undertaken by design students over the course of their two years of study is a combination of self-initiated research, grant-funded, team and collaborative projects, faculty assignments and commissions from clients. In addition students develop an independent reading and writing program that requires the critical analysis and creative synthesis of ideas.

As part of the only school devoted exclusively to graduate art education in the U.S., the department places great emphasis on the work undertaken by graduate students with the objective of adding significant contributions to the creative and intellectual bodies of design knowledge. Ending a two year period of study, outgoing students mount a museum installation of their thesis work for faculty review, and subsequently enter all areas of design with the critical skills necessary for generating meaningful contributions to our complex social and material culture.

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