Studying abroad in graphic design has always been the most popular major in design disciplines. Almost every foreign art school has opened this major. Parsons and RISD, as the top ranked graphic design majors all the year round, are also the first choice of many people. In addition to the ranking list, there is another school that is often ignored by everyone - Pratt. Today, we have selected these three top schools to conduct a "contest" of graphic design major in terms of professional direction, curriculum, application requirements, etc. Which one is your favorite when studying graphic design in RISD, Parsons, Pratt?
Which is better to study graphic design in RISD, Parsons or Pratt?
Rhode Island College of the Arts/RISD
When it comes to studying graphic design abroad, the first thing that comes to mind is of course Rhode Island School of Design Design majors in Rhode Island are famous for their comprehensive and innovative education, and graphic design is no exception. First of all, RISD means: Graphic Design at RISD provides a comparative education that puts on the boundaries of the discipline/ RISD graphic design provides comprehensive education and promotes discipline boundaries. Students will also learn how to convey ideas through vision and use software and other skills to build their own ideas, that is, RISD graphic design is to help students achieve the process from 2D to commercialization by learning more practical skills, vision, expression and other abilities.
Studios course is also a major feature of RISD graphic design. RISD has configured a series of advanced studios for students in the Design Center, where students will learn professional contents of various digital media from book layout, posters, logos, websites to applications.
Font Design Works of 2018 Students
In addition, in order to supplement students' commercial design concepts, RISD also invites dozens of well-known designers and critics in the industry to bring forums and lectures to students every year, which also provides students with rich opportunities for practice and cooperation.
RISD's undergraduate major in graphic design is a four-year program. The first year is foundation year. The main courses are mainly humanities, design theory, painting basics, etc. The second year, RISD officially entered the field of vision. From the second year's courses, we found that in addition to the traditional graphic design courses, it also includes the information design field of interaction design and programming. Most of the courses are series based, such as font design, poster design, etc., which are mostly divided into two units in the first and second semesters; In addition, the course in the third year has also expanded to the field of 3D. One of the courses is called Music Video. Students' task is to use video and audio design to convey visual narrative, which involves 3D design, lighting design and sound design, etc., which requires higher comprehensive design ability of students. In the last year, the course focuses on design practice. The school provides a series of elective courses to let students understand various specific areas of graphic design practice according to their own interests.
From the curriculum, we can easily find that RISD graphic design cultivates a versatile designer based on the graphic field, who can meet the professional needs of the commercial market: Graphic Design graduates leave RISD prepared to work in most any field imaginable, Alumni in the past also had many different career plans, including running their own design studios, working for large enterprises, serving the network and interactive media, and from packaging design to film and television title production.
Parsons School of Design/Parsons
As the number one in the United States Parsons School of Design Prasons, its graphic design major is not very famous. The reason is that other popular majors are very famous. The second reason is that Parsons' graphic design major is in the direction of communication design. There are also some differences between the curriculum and the traditional plane direction. What are the differences? Let's analyze them one by one.
The core of Communication Design is "communication". Students in this major will focus on typesetting and interaction. They will supplement their professional knowledge through a series of courses such as typesetting design, interaction design, brand promotion, network/mobile product design, etc. The school will also help students provide animation, Exploration and practice of internship projects in advertising design and information design.
Source: Parsons official website communication design class
The undergraduate curriculum is 4-year. From the curriculum, we can't even judge that it is a professional course in graphic design, because it almost includes all kinds of disciplines and even professional knowledge beyond design.
Because the course of the first year is foundation year, in addition to the basic course of painting, other courses are mainly aimed at the training of design thinking. The course topics include sustainable development, exploration of space, and even many thesis courses for training critical thinking. The course forms are also varied, including seminars, workshops, and so on.
Students will start systematic study of professional skills from the second year, mainly in typesetting design and programming. Students will learn how to design and develop complex interactive projects and conduct comprehensive research.
The course of the third year is the academic year that can best highlight the characteristics of Parsons' major. In this academic year, there are many "interdisciplinary" projects. For example, the first lesson "Topic Studio" focuses on the use of visual design to help promote contemporary brands, including VI design, brand strategy development, and so on.
Another theoretical course on "Visual Culture" is based on literary research in various fields such as art, design and architecture. The purpose of the course is to help students carry out design practice in a broader historical and theoretical context. This course also prepares students for their thesis writing in the fourth academic year.
Parsons has always been a pioneer in the field of art education. They are good at innovation, and are no exception in the field of graphic design. In addition to cultivating students' professional design skills, they pay more attention to leading students to explore the diversity of visual culture, and help students to be competent for various future roles in this expanding field.
Pratt College of Art
First of all, in terms of the overall professional orientation, Preet College of Art Pratt believes that "Communication design is a multifaceted and interdisciplinary field of study and practice.".
Pratt also put forward some teaching views on the major: "prepare students to be versatile and acute communicators; critical and conceptual thinkers; And inspired and responsible cultural producers. "; At the same time, it can also become a thinker with critical thinking, and support itself to become a producer of cultural creativity with a high sense of creativity and responsibility. ".
It is not difficult to see that Pratt's teaching requirements and fundamentals for students are also very "interdisciplinary awareness". Students who want to become such compliant artists/designers also need multi-dimensional training and teaching.
In terms of specific majors, Pratt has also refined the majors in order to cultivate students' high comprehensive ability, which is very similar to Pratt's RCA/Huangyi which ranks first in the world. The majors are divided into three specific directions: Graphic design/graphic design, Illustrations/illustration, and Advertising Art Direction/advertising art creativity.
Screenshot from RCA official website
Each professional direction gives students the same height but different dimensions of teaching and training, so that students can develop in multiple fields and become more in-depth "interdisciplinary" comprehensive creators and artists/designers.
In the course part, Pratt's ability training for students mainly focuses on the following aspects: "individual perspectives, Critical, visual literacy, media fluency, empirical learning, and innovative formal outcomes.
We have talked with you about "science popularization". Pratt has a foundation year. After learning the foundation year, students will specifically choose and start their own professional learning direction in the university. The same is true for students majoring in Communication Design. After the second year, students will begin to learn specific Communication Design. The second year's course learning will also be more professional and skilled, and some "hard core" courses will be used to cultivate students' professional quality in specific directions.
In the third year, we entered the key point - namely, the choice of three major directions. Based on the professional accumulation in the previous two years and the construction of the cognitive system at the level of thinking awareness, students have already had sufficient professional cognition and choice intention in the third year. Therefore, the third year is the year for students to make key choices. Students should choose a specific professional direction from the three professional directions mentioned above, and conduct in-depth inquiry and divergent learning again based on this specific professional direction.
At this point, because different students choose different directions, the curriculum will begin to show obvious differences. Next, let's talk about the above three professional directions:
Graphic Design
Pratt directly proposed on the professional page of Graphic Design. For students who choose this direction to study, the focus of the course is mainly based on "plane", covering learning dimensions including: typographic/font layout, identity systems/visual system design, visual rhetoric/visual decoration, interaction/plane interaction, experience design/experience design, Sustainability and inclusiveness.
These courses are all carried out in the way of studio, and most professional skill courses are divided into two stages: exploration and practice. The direction of graphic design also encourages people to learn more different skills and interdisciplinary cooperation to explore more possibilities in the graphic field.
Illustration
It is easy to understand the course content of illustration. Most of the students' courses are in the form of studio. The whole professional curriculum encourages students to use different performance techniques, materials and platforms to do innovative experiments. In addition, the school also provides a series of elective courses for students, including graphic novels/illustration books, animation/animation, 3D modeling/3D models, independent publishing/self publishing, editorial illustration/illustration design, children's books/children's books, concept art/conceptual art and illustrated typography/illustration typesetting.
Advertising Art
The training direction of students who choose advertising design direction is mostly related to market and brand, and the course content also includes project research especially related to contemporary advertising activities. From the study of graphic design techniques to the exploration of application in the commercial field, students' practice will also focus on creating meaningful advertising activities for brands, including innovation in technology, form and concept.
Specific learning dimensions include print/publishing, motion/motion, objects/goals, products/products, wayfinding systems/guidance systems, exhibitions/exhibitions, installations/installation art, etc.
Comparison of application requirements for graphic design study abroad RISD/Parsons/Pratt:
Rhode Island College of the Arts/RISD
Language: IELTS 6.5 (5.5)/TOEFL 93
The collection of graphic design works for overseas students is required to include 12-20 works, showing the complete process of thinking and production.
Assignment: This is a creation of RISD's independent proposition. Students can choose one of the three themes given, and the final presentation is uploaded in the form of video.
Collection requirements
In addition, applicants need to submit a written material of no more than 650 words, which can include self introduction, your problems in the field of graphic design, and the direction or ideas you want to explore in the next step.
Student works
Parsons School of Design/Parsons
Language: IELTS 7.0/TOEFL 92
Collection requirements:
1. Contains 8 to 12 pictures;
2. The form of works can include painting, sculpture, clothing design, animation, graphic design or sketch, etc., which does not need to be specific to the specialty;
3. The school hopes to see more creative practical projects.
*Parsons Challenge: The collection also includes a proposition project
Collection and thesis requirements
Thesis: The content can include the reasons why you apply for Parsons or this major, and show your critical thinking about art and design.
Student work compass
Pratt College of Art
Language: IELTS 6.5
Collection requirements:
1. It contains 12-20 pieces of works, which do not need to be specific to the specialty, but can include any form of art works.
2. In addition, it needs to include 3-5 sketching works, which can include scenery, still life, self portrait, architectural sketching, etc.
Collection requirements
Because Pratt attaches great importance to students' creativity and potential, students can try more combinations of different materials and interdisciplinary attempts in the work collection.
Direction of illustration - student works
Graphic design study abroad is limited to the traditional definition of plane, so many students will have a fixed understanding of it. But in fact, as the European and American teaching concepts become more and more "interdisciplinary", more and more media for artistic expression are available, and the boundaries between disciplines are constantly broken. Graphic design is no longer only "constrained" by the plane, but it has begun to have more dimensional interpretations and expressions.
As we can see today, RISD, Parsons and Pratt, the three high-quality art schools in the United States, have actually given their professional understanding of graphic design, as well as specific dimensions of professional divergence. For students who are choosing art schools, these three schools all have their own characteristics and advantages. When choosing schools, everyone should also consider comprehensively according to their professional intentions and future development intentions as far as possible.
Natural light shares more topics for you:
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