Graduate Programs

Graphic Design (MFA)

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Graduate Programs
Graphic Design (MFA)
MFA graphic designers at MICA use text, image, form, and storytelling to construct engaging experiences across media.

Graphic design requires active thinking and making. Our dedicated faculty, vibrant curriculum, and well-equipped studio environment help MFA designers build deep formal skills, nimble thinking strategies, and rich professional portfolios. Graduates of the program work nationally and internationally as creative practitioners, educators, and thought leaders.

Program Overview

MICA's Graphic Design MFA is an incubator for design research and personal growth within the context of a leading US art college. The 60-credit curriculum includes structured studio courses, critical seminars, and guided independent work. In electives offered by the GD MFA program and across MICA, students explore typography, UI/UX, publication design, motion graphics, letterpress, screenprinting, illustration, social design, and more. Every semester, visiting designers and critics infuse GD MFA’s core program with new perspectives.

Today’s designers confront exciting creative and intellectual challenges across diverse media and environments. MICA's two-year MFA program provides an extraordinary setting for developing critical ideas about the history, future, and social uses of visual communication.

Who Should Apply

MICA’s Graphic Design MFA program serves designers seeking to expand their capacity as visual communicators and work creatively in the profession. Selected from an international pool of applicants, students include experienced designers seeking to deepen their skills and perspectives, recent graduates of intensive design programs, and creative thinkers from related disciplines such as data science, photography, journalism, and the fine arts.

STEM OPT for International Students

MICA’s Graphic Design majors are eligible to apply for a 24-month STEM OPT Extension. Designers can apply for the extension while completing their first year of OPT.

Read more about STEM OPT

Sara Austin + Enlarge
Christina Chahyadi + Enlarge

Placeholders

Graphic Design, MFA Placeholders is a reflection on memory, pop culture, and loss. This thesis leverages the power of storytelling in design to create a world that blends the widely recognizable and the deeply personal. Utilizing a broad range of design methods including typography, type design, photography, illustration, 3d, photo editing, and collage, this exhibition varies broadly in its execution but becomes a unified whole in its color, typography, and highly structured arrangement. IG: @sara.aust Website: saraustin.design

Artist
Sara Austin
Date
2023
Credit

Image courtesy of the artist.

The Matrix of Language

Graphic Design, MFA Based on the International Phonetic Association, the constituents of ~7,100 languages can be distilled into 107 sound symbols. The Matrix of Language shows the interconnectedness of languages and translates its sonic features and nuances into shapes, hues, sizes, and locations. This exhibit visualizes the 44 core sounds that are present in English. The network shows how sounds, the building blocks of language, are integral in forming and navigating linguistic systems. In practice, graphical guides provide an approachable tool for learning to pronounce words in new languages, empowering people to have agency over their linguistic journeys. @crissyvr / christinachahyadi@gmail.com

Artist
Christina Chahyadi
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

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Veiled Aggressions

Graphic Design, MFA Veiled Aggressions explores how people’s hidden aggressions and biases cause biracial and mixed-race people to feel like they do not belong in their environment. As a result, these actions begin to tear and rip apart pieces of that person—forcing them to piece together their past experiences in a new environment where they can find a sense of belonging and understanding.

Artist
Eric Ng
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Bio-form

Graphic Design, MFA Bio-form creates a healing world through graphic therapy. My visual vocabulary stems from biomorphic theory and biomorphic Surrealism. By summarizing abstract shapes from nature and combining them with hidden alphabets, I built a graphic microcosm of an imaginary world. Soothing 3D motions and gradient colors provide a therapeutic journey inspired by natural creatures, petri dishes, and laboratory equipment. The goal is to give people a breathing space for appreciating microorganisms in nature and micro-movements in the mind.

Artist
Naige Guo
Date
2023
Credit

Images courtesy of the artist

The ADHD Atlas

Graphic Design, MFA The ADHD Atlas is a guidebook exploring the experiences of people with ADHD and the tools they have created for learning, growing, and navigating their lives. Graphic design has been used strategically as a tool to clearly communicate information to people with ADHD and successfully hold their attention. The exhibition that accompanies the book, shown here, uses posters to showcase an exaggerated version of a day in the life of someone with ADHD. Website: http://hannaheve.design/ IG: @hannaheve.design Email: hannahevedesign@gmail.com

Artist
Hannah Abele
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Visual Disturbances

Graphic Design, MFA This thesis explores visual analogies of optical disturbances. It attempts to translate bodily experiences and symptoms of ocular migraines into visual forms in order to describe sensations. The piece invites the viewers to encounter these visceral effects through two- and three-dimensional form. Experimental visualizations of unquantifiable feelings act as field guides toward understanding and sharing these disturbances, which affect many people during the course of their lives. Website: drishtikhokhar.com IG: @drishti_khokhar Email: drishtikhokhar@gmail.com

Artist
Drishti Khokhar
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

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Molane Hu + Enlarge
Hui Zeng + Enlarge
Michelle Shin + Enlarge

Slow Cubicle

Graphic Design, MFA Slow Cubicle challenges the conventional ideals of efficiency by utilizing iconic workplace objects as vehicles to explore slowness. Slow Cubicle also revamps the grid system by infusing mindfulness with squares, lines, and circles. Each Slow Calendar collects all the days of the week into a separate banner, overriding linear time in favor of lived experiences. The Slow Planner encourages present planning through poetic prompts and ethereal tasks. Slow Sticky Notes urge deceleration with mind-provoking graphics. Together, these objects ask individuals to pause and contemplate amidst the modern focus on speed and productivity. website: https://jinghanhu.com/ IG: @m0lanewhohuwh0 email: molanehu@gmail.com

Artist
Molane Hu
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Toaster Type Foundry

Graphic Design, MFA Toaster Type Foundry presents three different typefaces, CRAFT, REFLECT, and CUT. CRAFT reacts to calligraphic strokes and the sharpness of digital type. REFLECT employs a repeated counter shape, striving to remain consistent at all costs, while CUT tries to be as inconsistent as possible. Each typeface explores the constraints and conventions of typeface design to create new and intriguing forms.

Artist
Hui Zeng
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Be Queer, Rest Here

Graphic Design, MFA Queer people are tired and need spaces of rest. This body of work creates conditions in which an audience can situate themselves to slow down. The target audience is queer people, though all are welcome to rest. In a capitalist society, being busy is glorified and idleness is stigmatized. The notion of rest as resistance is at the core of each piece produced in this collection of objects and images. A visual thread uniting much of the work is illegible type and lettering. Unreadable words act as visual metaphors for slowing down as they require readers to pause to decipher meaning. IG: @alfie.marsland Website: althemiamarsland.com Email: create@althemiamarsland.com

Artist
Alfie Marsland
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the Artist

A Musician's Translation

Graphic Design, MFA A musician’s internal, abstract understanding of music is invisible to see, which makes it difficult to acknowledge. This understanding can be revealed graphically and translated visually. My thesis introduces a sophisticated interpretation of how I look at music as a musician through the lens of a graphic designer. Through my experiences, memories, and subjectivity, I compose my own visual music by experimenting with abstract notations and creating a personal language. IG: ms_odette103 Website: michelleshin.space/

Artist
Michelle Shin
Date
2023
Credit

Images are courtesy of the artist.

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Tall coffee can with geometric black and white pattern. The same pattern is on the surface against which the can is photographed.
Tall coffee can with geometric black and white pattern. The same pattern is on the surface against which the can is photographed.
Tall coffee can with geometric black and white pattern. The same pattern is on the surface against which the can is photographed.
Cut out mask of an African-American man's face.
Tall coffee can with geometric black and white pattern. The same pattern is on the surface against which the can is photographed.

Hypno Coffee

Graphic Design M.F.A.

Artist
Chae (Jason) Seungkwan
Date
2017
Credit

Image courtesy of the artist. 

Museum of Regret

Graphic Design M.F.A.

Artist
Shrenik Ganatra
Date
2016
Credit

Video courtesy of the artist.

Parade

Graphic Design M.F.A.

Artist
Hayelin Choi
Date
2017
Credit

Video courtesy of the artist.  

Cut out mask of an African-American man's face.

Don't Be Angry

Graphic Design M.F.A.

Artist
Stefon Kelly
Date
2018
Credit

Image courtesy of the artist. 

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Featured Course

Advanced Publication Design

In this portfolio-oriented course, graduate students will work on publication design projects involving complex typographic systems, hierarchies, formats, and sequences. The course will encourage students to expand and demonstrate their typographic vocabularies.

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