Graphic Design

In the Graphic Design program, you’ll be immersed in an integrative learning environment where traditional design fundamentals evolve into powerful tools for communication, problem-solving, and creative strategizing.

You’ll begin by exploring foundational design elements such imagery and visualization; typography and voice; the power of color, composition, and grid; and concept and content development; creating meaningful messages and bringing stories to life that challenge, educate, inspire, and entertain. With this solid foundation, you will be constantly learning and evolving as you keep pace with the ever-changing world of technology, culture, and media and immerse yourself in the people and problems associated with each project you take on. You’ll develop your own voice by learning how to make design decisions informed and supported by intensive design research and strategic thinking, thorough and iterative concepting and ideation, meaningful collaboration and critique, and the prototyping and testing of ideas before production.

You’ll also round your education out with a wide range of general education and art history courses that will stimulate your curiosity, broaden your perspective, and inspire new creative expressions. KCAD’s flexible General Education Pathways model empowers you to direct your learning by exploring subjects you find most engaging and relevant.

As a Graphic Design student, you’ll not only develop proficiency in the latest industry-standard software applications, but understand technology and its role in socio-cultural communication as well. You’ll heighten critical, analytical, and strategic thinking skills, increasing your creative, processual, and organizational ability as a designer.

As you begin to hone your personal design voice and grasp of visual language, you’ll also sharpen your verbal communication skills through collaborative projects and the critique and presentation of ideas and finished work. While you develop a strong portfolio of work that demonstrates your skills as a designer, you’ll also cultivate an understanding of how design can drive solutions to complex problems. Ultimately, you will learn to be a resourceful, self-sufficient leader who understands how to use communication and entrepreneurial skills to address both business and societal problems and create new opportunities.

KCAD’s Graphic Design program promotes curiosity, exploration, investigation, and making, preparing you for professional success while also giving you the freedom to pursue your personal voice as a designer. As you progress through the program, you’ll encounter intimate and personalized learning experiences combined with strong connections to and support from your faculty. The facilitation of a required professional experience such as an internship, study away experience, or course-driven professional project, will help you make a seamless transition into the field upon graduation.

KCAD’s Graphic Design program emphasizes both “making” and “thinking,” encouraging you to be broad and bold in the way you use your skills and passion to make a difference in the world around you. The program’s ordered and gradually intensifying curriculum structure offers a clear and progressive development and refinement of knowledge and skills, providing you a solid foundation on which to build and expand your process, experience, confidence, sensitivity, and sense of professionalism from semester to semester.

You’ll also benefit from the program’s integrative learning environment, where all media and modes of design communication are applied – including specialties like advertising design, user experience and web design, and environmental/retail design – and supplementary skills in photography, illustration/drawing, digital media, printmaking, and 3D and product design are encouraged.

As a graduate of the Graphic Design program, your invaluable and highly-marketable creative communication skills will open up a wide variety of employment opportunities. Some Graphic Design graduates work for firms that specialize in design, advertising, or branding; others work in-house for corporations or non-profits; and some work for themselves as freelancers or contract workers, while others launch their own successful businesses. Some work in highly specialized fields like UI/UX design, publishing, or packaging. You’ll also be well positioned to continue your education at the graduate level.