* ART 1732a or b, Introduction to Graphic Design  Staff

A studio introduction to visual communication, with emphasis on the visual organization of design elements as a means to transmit meaning and values. Topics include shape, color, visual hierarchy, word-image relationships, and typography. Development of a verbal and visual vocabulary to discuss and critique the designed world.  HU  RP
HTBA

* ART 1745b, Introduction to Digital Video  Neil Goldberg

Introduction to the formal principles and basic tools of digital video production. Experimental techniques taught alongside traditional HD camera operation and sound capture, using the Adobe production suite for editing and manipulation. Individual and collaborative assignments explore the visual language and conceptual framework for digital video. Emphasis on the spatial and visual aspects of the medium rather than the narrative. Screenings from video art, experimental film, and traditional cinema.  RP
M 1:30pm-5:30pm

* ART 1784a or b, 3D Modeling for Creative Practice  Staff

Through creation of artwork, using the technology of 3D modeling and virtual representation, students develop a framework for understanding how experiences are shaped by emerging technologies. Students create forms, add texture, and illuminate with realistic lights; they then use the models to create interactive and navigable spaces in the context of video games and virtual reality, or to integrate with photographic images. Focus on individual project development and creative exploration. Frequent visits to Yale University art galleries. This course is a curricular collaboration with The Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale (CCAM).  RP
HTBA

* ART 2706b, Letterpress Printing: History & Fundamental Practice  Staff

A practical introduction to the craft of letterpress printing, with a focus on the physical production of printed material using hand-set type, and plates designed/created by the student. Topics include the history of paper, ink and moveable type, the safe operation and maintenance of printing presses, and the printers’ work flow from design to composition to production and completion of the finished work. ART 1732 or instructor permission.
MW 9:25am-11:20am

ART 2743a, Introduction to Typeface Design  Staff

Procedure for building typeface designs on the basis of historical sources. Aesthetic issues presented by single letters and their interrelationships; principles of letterform rendering and spacing, optical mechanics, cultural signals. Use of the type-design program RoboFont to digitize letterforms on screen and turn them into usable fonts. No prerequisites, this course is explicitly for beginning type designers. More advanced students see ART 7443.
F 1:30pm-5:30pm

* ART 2764a, Typography!  Julian Bittiner

An intermediate graphic-design course in the fundamentals of typography, with emphasis on ways in which typographic form and visual arrangement create and support content. Focus on designing and making books, employing handwork, and computer technology. Typographic history and theory discussed in relation to course projects. Prerequisite: ART 1732.   RP
Th 1:30pm-5:30pm

* ART 2766a, Graphic Design Histories  Geoff Kaplan

This three-part course examines the role of alternative and underground media in the formation of social movements in the United States from the mid- to late 20th century, specifically focusing on graphic design. Our animating question throughout the term is: “can graphic design be understood as a form of activism or protest?”  Looking to histories of graphic innovation linked to diverse social interests (among them, Black power, women’s liberation, queer activism, environmentalism, the antiwar movement, independence movements, etc.), we will study the ways in which collective practices fashion the image of a culture in times of pronounced political change: as a vehement challenge to the dominance of official media and a critical form of self-representation. One goal is to consider the implications of such work in the present, a moment in which corporate media, misinformation campaigns, and algorithmic capitalism has exerted decisive control over public discourse.  HU
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

* ART 3769a or b, Interactive Design and the Internet: Software for People  Tiriree Kananuruk

In this studio course, students create work within the web browser to explore where the internet comes from, where it is today, and where it’s going—recognizing that there is no singular history, present, or future, but many happening in parallel. The course in particular focuses on the internet’s impact on art—and vice versa—and how technological advance often coincides with artistic development. Students will learn foundational, front-end languages HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in order to develop unique graphic forms for the web that are considered alongside navigation, pacing, and adapting to variable screen sizes and devices. Open to Art majors. No prior programming experience required. Prerequisite: ART 1732 or permission of instructor.  RP
HTBA

ART 3770b, Motion Design: Communicating with Time, Motion, and Sound  Staff

A studio class that explores how the graphic designer’s conventions of print typography and the dynamics of word-image relationship change with the introduction of time, motion, and sound. Projects focus on the controlled interaction of words and images to express an idea or tell a story. The extra dimensions of time-based communications; choreography of aural and visual images through selection, editing, and juxtaposition. Prerequisite: ART 2765; ART 3768 recommended.  RP
M 1:30pm-5:30pm

* ART 3779a, Hardware for People  Tiriree Kananuruk

Graphic design shapes how people interact with objects, interfaces, and environments. In physical computing, graphic design extends beyond static form to systems that sense, respond, and change in real time. This course focuses on designing physical devices and interfaces that we interact with using our bodies, introducing physical computing as a design practice centered on the relationship between body, object, and computation. Using electronics, sensors, and microcontrollers such as ESP32, students explore how touch, movement, and presence become inputs that influence visual and interactive outcomes. Hardware is approached as a form of interface and communication. Throughout the course, students examine questions such as: What does it mean to design a moveable interface? What does an interface look like when it can change in real time? How do design decisions shape interaction? How can designers sense space and context? Can the audience become part of the work? Permission of instructor. Prior experience with programming and interactive media is strongly recommended. Completion of ART 3769 or a similar course is ideal. Students should be comfortable building simple interactive systems and working with basic programming concepts. Experience with JavaScript or other programming languages such as Processing, Python, Java, C, or C++ is sufficient. No prior experience with electronics or hardware is required. 
MW 9:25am-11:20am

* ART 3794a, Text, Speech, and Moving Image  Neil Goldberg

This studio course explores the formal and expressive possibilities of language—both as visual text and spoken word—within video art. Through in-class prompts, students generate writing in various styles, including diaristic, free-associative, expository, and lyrical. This writing serves as a catalyst for video material, which in turn informs new writing, cultivating an iterative dialectic between the two. Readings are drawn from experimental memoir, fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms; screenings include single-channel video art, video installation, and experimental cinema. Students engage in regular critiques as they develop a series of short video works, culminating in a final project. Prerequisites: ART 145 or permission of instructor.
M 3:30pm-7:30pm

ART 4768b, Advanced Graphic Design: Ad Hoc Series and Systems  Julian Bittiner

Much of the field of design concerns itself with devising systems in an attempt to create aesthetic coherence and reduce creative uncertainties, seeking efficiencies with respect to time, production and materials. However this strategy always comes up against each individual set of circumstances; the materials and content at hand, a particular cast of collaborators, a given timeframe. There is an element of the ad hoc in every piece of design; a need to improvise, interpret, adapt, make exceptions. A second thematic concern of this class is the exploration of medium-specificity and medium-porosity as they relate to such systems. The course is comprised of a series of interconnected prompts across distinct formats in print, motion, and interactive, at a wide variety of scales. A third and final thread is the cultivation of greater awareness of the evolving social and aesthetic functions of design processes, artifacts, and channels of engagement and distribution, within increasingly complex cultural contexts. Prerequisites: ART 2764 or 2765, and 3767 or 3768, or permission of instructor.  RP
W 1:30pm-5:30pm

ART 7000a and ART 7001b, Preliminary Studio: Graphic Design  Henk Van Assen

For students entering the three-year program. This preliminary-year studio offers an intensive course of study in the fundamentals of graphic design and visual communication. Emphasis is on developing a strong formal foundation and conceptual skills. Broad issues such as typography, color, composition, letterforms, interactive and motion graphics skills, and production technology are addressed through studio assignments.  6 Course cr per term
T 1:30pm-5:30pm

ART 7040a and ART 7041b, Individual Criticism: Preliminary-year Graphic Design  Nontsikelelo Mutiti

Limited to M.F.A. preliminary-year graphic design students.  3 Course cr per term
HTBA

ART 7110a and ART 7111b, First-Year Graduate Studio: Graphic Design  Staff

For students entering the two-year program. The first-year core studio is composed of a number of intense workshops taught by resident and visiting faculty. These core workshops grow from a common foundation, each assignment asking the student to reconsider text, space, or object. We encourage the search for connections and relationships between the projects. Rather than seeing courses as being discreet, our faculty teaching other term-long classes expect to be shown work done in the core studio. Over the course of the term, the resident core studio faculty help students identify nascent interests and possible thesis areas.  3 Course cr per term
T 1:30pm-5:30pm

ART 7123b, Writing as Visual Practice  Andrew Walsh-Lister

This semester-long course supports first-year MFA graphic design students in developing an interconnected relationship between writing, research and practice. Through a combination of independent inquiry, writing prompts, group exercises, readings, guest lectures, workshops and acts of distribution, ‘Writing as Visual Practice’ approaches writing as a fundamental part of a practice. The course offers a space to actively consider the form of writing and to interrogate its role within a wider design practice, oscillating between the interiority of one’s own work or position, and the exteriority of external audiences and sources. In doing so, the course seeks to set the groundwork for independent thesis writing that follows in the second year of the program, and for an ongoing interrogation of broader modes and possibilities of writing, publishing, editorial and design practices at large.  3 Course cr
Th 1:30pm-4:30pm

ART 7220a and ART 7221b, Second-Year Graduate Studio: Graphic Design  Staff

For second-year graduate students. This studio focuses simultaneously on the study of established design structures and personal interpretation of those structures. The program includes an advanced core class and seminar in the fall; independent project development, presentation, and individual meetings with advisers and editors who support the ongoing independent project research throughout the year. Other master classes, workshops, tutorials, and lectures augment studio work. The focus of the second year is the development of independent projects, and a significant proportion of the work is self-motivated and self-directed.  6 Course cr per term
Th 1:30pm-5:30pm

ART 7344a and ART 7345b, Individual Criticism: Graphic Design  Nontsikelelo Mutiti

Limited to M.F.A. graphic design students.  3 Course cr per term
HTBA

ART 7443b, Advanced Typeface Design  Nina Stoessinger

Like other art forms, typeface design responds to aesthetic ideas and currents, as well as functional, technological, and linguistic contexts and constraints. What does it mean to define a useful, original design brief for a typeface, and how can typefaces — understood as systems of recombinable letterforms and spaces — respond to design intent while honoring their intended functionality? This course explores articulating and evaluating design concepts for original type; researching, and working with, potential reference material; and bringing design ideas to life across a consistent and convincing set of original letterforms, while evaluating the work according to its intended usage. Aimed at intermediate typeface designers with some experience drawing and spacing type, the course focuses on building a consistent typeface design that responds to an original brief defined in consultation with the instructor. The course is taught using RoboFont, but is open to existing users of other font editors.  3 Course cr
W 3:30pm-6:30pm

ART 7445a, T for Typographies  Julian Bittiner

Part methodological, part historical, part experimental, this studio course investigates contemporary Latin-based typography with an emphasis on craft and expression. Typography is not the dutiful application of a set of rules; however, both inherited and emerging conventions across various geographies and media are closely examined. Students learn to skillfully manipulate these conventions according to the conceptual, formal, and practical concerns of a given project. Supported by historical and contemporary writing and examples, assignments aim to develop observational and compositional skills across a variety of media, oscillating between micro- and macro-aesthetic concerns, from the design of individual letterforms to the setting of large texts, and everything in between. The course includes a short workshop in lettering, but the primary focus is on digitally generated typography and type design. Experimentation with nondigital processes is also encouraged. Students develop an increasingly refined and personal typographic vocabulary, customizing assignments according to their skills and interests.  3 Course cr
W 9:25am-12:25pm

ART 7454b, Code and Interfaces  Alvin Ashiatey

This course invites an in-depth examination of the digital tools that are integral to the graphic design practice. It is common for designers to default to industry-standard software, which can inadvertently narrow creative exploration. Our goal is to go beyond the usual limits by finding new ways to use current technologies, linking different tools together, and maybe even creating our own custom digital tools. We examine the technologies we currently use and search for new, maybe even unconventional, methodologies for creation and knowledge production. The course is structured around a series of lectures, group discussions, and hands-on workshops and culminates in a substantive project. This course does not require a background in software development, merely a willingness to engage with new media in novel and inventive ways. The workshops in this course cover a range of tools and techniques, including p5.js, Processing, Drawbot, InDesign Scripting, Web Scraping, OpenCV, and natural language processing. These sessions are designed to provide hands-on experience and enhance students' digital toolkit.  3 Course cr
Th 9:25am-12:25pm

ART 7460a, Vocable Gestures  Andrew Walsh-Lister

A studio course exploring forms of broadcast and voice as material, and the interrelations of typography, sound and circulation. Through expanded approaches to publishing and making public, the course frames modes of transmission and distribution as active components of the work itself. Borrowing its title from a 1977 survey-essay by sound poets and low-tech technologists Larry Wendt and Stephen Ruppenthal, ‘Vocable Gestures’ draws on a range of references, precedents, distances and frequencies. Notably from the history of telephony and communication technologies in New Haven specifically, notions of ‘tele-intimacy’ and from text-sound as a medium in which ‘poetry left the page of the book to invade the acoustic space — once again’. Students will engage with the phonic, semantic and material possibilities of language and develop independent projects that incorporate gestures of making, writing, listening, transmitting and sharing  3 Course cr
M 9:25am-12:25pm

ART 7476a, Ancestral Intelligence and Material Knowledge  Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Alvin Ashiatey

This hybrid studio-seminar course examines the life of objects across time, institutions, and lived contexts through hands-on engagement, critical reading, and experimental making. Working with objects from the university’s collection and installations at the Yale University Art Gallery, students investigate how meaning is produced, transformed, and contested through display, interpretation, and use. The Nguni exhibition anchors the course, framing questions of cultural authorship, material knowledge, and representation through the lens of situated knowledge. Using lens-based and technological tools, such as 3D scanning, microscopy, and imaging techniques, students encounter objects anew and consider how mediation reshapes perception and knowledge. The course emphasizes multisensory approaches and diverse interpretive frameworks, with particular attention to “charged objects” and the ethics of access, display, and use. Foregrounding multiple methodologies of “listening to images”, including close looking, sensory analysis, studio production, discussion, and writing, the course bridges analysis and making. Guest speakers, including international practitioners, curators, conservators, and scholars, contribute to the course, alongside artist-led workshops that examine connections between making, labor, craft traditions, and embodied knowledge, foregrounding practitioners as keepers of technique and cultural memory. The course culminates in a final visual project that synthesizes research, experimentation, and critical reflection.  3 Course cr
M 1:30pm-4:30pm

ART 7477b, Situated Scaffolds  Anna Craycroft

This course is a material interrogation of how to use, adapt and create structural supports for display. Over the course of the semester we will experiment with a range of methods and materials that situate graphic design within physical contexts. We will study models found in our daily lives, through exhibition visits, from visiting lectures. Students are expected to bring their own references for discussion and inspiration, each generating a sourcebook for ideas and techniques over the course of the semester. Together we will share ideas and resources, building towards collaboration when applicable.  The coursework requires students to experiment with and apply the scaffolding methods using their own work and design practice. The semester is broken into three units of focus - each four classes in total. Each unit will include: examining models (either on site, with guest visitors, or in slides), & material experimentations in class, to culminate in final presentations and group critique. Students will work alone or in teams to problem solve material solutions for each thematic framework.  3 Course cr
M 1:30pm-4:30pm