77 courses with the subject DSGN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
DSGN 0010Art, Design and Digital Culture
This course is an introduction to the fundamental perception, representation, aesthetics, and design that shape today's visual culture. It addresses the way artists and designers create images; design with analog and digital tools; communicate, exchange, and express meaning over a broad range of media; and find their voices within the fabric of contemporary art, design, and visual culture. Emphasis is placed on building an extended form of visual literacy by studying and making images using a variety of representation techniques; learning to organize and structure two-dimenstional and three-dimensional space, and designing with time-based and procedural media. Students learn to develop an individual style of idea-generation, experimentation, iteration, and critique as part of their creative and critical responses to visual culture.Fall or SpringAlso Offered As: VLST 2640Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 50011 Course Unit
Digital Illustration is a course designed to expose students to the diverse techniques and approaches used in creating digital illustration for print publication. Course assignments will include two-dimensional animation storyboard rendering, figure illustration, technical diagram illustration, photographic retouching and enhancing. Digital applications will include morphing with layers, surface cloning, three-dimensional modeling and spatial transformation of scenes and objects. Students completing this course will possess the capability to design and place creatively and skillfully execute finished artwork.
An investigation of an object-oriented design process utilizing digital drawings, rapid prototyping, and digital fabrication techniques. This course introduces design as a creative act marking out a synthesis based on observation of a problem, interpretation of possibilities, and translation of a concept into meaningful three-dimensional objects that engage with society and social justice. The course includes a weekly lecture and studio component.
"Open Book" will focus on visual communication of information. It will address two methods of inquiry and the corresponding means of visual representation: the objective, well structured research of facts and images, and the creative process of their subjective evaluation and restatement. Students will propose a topic based on their area of interest and engage in a focused, semester-long exploration, which they will present in the form of a designed and printed book.
This course explores typography in the context of other arts, styles and movements to understand how aesthetic and cultural values of a given period manifest themselves in the typographic form. We explore typography both as a means to organize information and as an expressive visual medium. The course format is divided between studio projects and seminar (lectures and discussions), including visits to the Rare Book Collection and the Common Press for presentations and workshops.
The course introduces students to graphic design as a method of communication in which the interaction of formal elements—color, composition, typography, images—creates complex messages. During the semester, students develop coherent yet open-ended visual systems and apply them in a variety of contexts including posters, publications and architectural settings. Studio projects focus on both conceptual and formal aspects of visual communication such as creating visual metaphors and structuring information. Lectures and critiques offer theoretical grounding, while hands-on workshops present practical skills and techniques, opening the space for experimentation. Fall, Spring, and Summer Terms Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 5018 1 Course Unit
DSGN 1200Procedural Design Systems for Virtual Environments
"Procedural Design Systems for Virtual Environments" challenges students to reconceptualize 3D design within digital and virtual ecosystems, not just as production but as concept creation. Embracing system-based workflows, the course delves into procedural modeling, shader creation, and optimization, all set within a software-agnostic framework. Central to this studio course is the concept of assets as "units of language" within larger digital narratives, driven by the use of design systems to ensure these assets are contextually coherent and resource-efficient. Through hands-on workshops, discussions, and tutorials, participants will master procedural workflows, preparing them to craft assets that are both technically robust and culturally relevant Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 5200 1 Course Unit
This course introduces methods of modeling, texturing, and rendering human and animal figures. Students will study anatomical bone and muscle structures, and then employ this knowledge as they develop polygonal models for real-time 3D simulations or gaming environments, high-resolution rendersing, and rapid prototyping.
Book and Publication Design will focus on the theory and profesional practice of designing multi-page publications. Students will analyze formal structures of different types of books-literature and poetry, fiction and non-fiction compilations, illustrated volumes such as art catalogues, monographs and textsbooks, and serial editions-discussing both traditional and experimental approaches. The format of the course will be split between theoretical and historical evaluations of book formats by drawing on the Van Pelt Rare Book Collection - and studio time where students will design books with attention to the format's conceptual relationship to the material at hand with a focus on typography and page layout, as well as on understanding production methods of printing and binding. In addition to the conventions of page layout, students will examine paratextual elements (title page, practice of pagination and other internal structuring, content lists and indexes, colophons, notes, and marginalia, and end-leaves binding, etc.).
Practicum provides a real world experience for students interested in solving design problems for non-profit and community organizations. The studio works with two clients each semester, and previous projects have included print design, web design, interpretive signage and exhibit interactives. All projects are real and will result in portfolio-ready finished product. Students will participate in full design experience including design, client interaction, presentations, production and project management. In addition, students will take field trips, meet professionals and go on studio visits.
Advanced 3-D Modeling will give students the opportunity to refind skills in modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering with an emphasis on the evolution of ideas through constant revision based class critique. Students will use a variety of industry standard software packages, including but not limited to Maya and Mudbox to compose complex environments. Projects are designed to give students the opportunity to work with orginial content within a simulated production environment.
This course will explore advanced commercial, public and personal forms of visual communication. Emphasis will be placed on creative problem solving with consideration for audience. Discussion of design history, current ideology and future design applications will inform individual student projects. Work generated in this studio can be used to build a portfolio.
DSGN 2090Projection as a Tool for Expression and Communication in
the Public Space The course will introduce students to projection as a tool of artistic expression and cultural communication. The purpose of the course is to prepare designers and artists for the projection-based Installations, and performances. Students' projects will take form of projections- animations of interior or exterior architectural and sculptural sites as well as inventions and presentations of wearable, portable, or mobile performative projects. The projects may require specific cultural research and a creative use of basic software, hardware, and physical modeling. Students will be encouraged to experiment with video projectors and micro-projectors in connection with available media devices, such as smart phones, speakers, monitors, sensors, or other input and output components, as well as the use of unconventional materials, and forms as projection “screens. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 5090 1 Course Unit
This immersive media course explores the design and application of virtual, augmented, and mixed realities. It combines project-based learning with an understanding of the historical and cultural impacts of these technologies. Focused on immersive design principles and user experience, the course equips students with the necessary technical and artistic skills for creating interactive virtual environments. Through practical exercises and discussions, students will master immersive tools and techniques. The course culminates in a significant project that demonstrates students' critical perspective on immersive media and their ability to produce work with an artistic or design function relevant to thei wider practice. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
“Embodied Interfaces for Immersion” explores the design of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) for Extended Realities (VR, AR, Projection Mapping) to create immersive, human-centered, and embodied experiences in physical and virtual spaces. NUIs in this context not only aim to lower cognitive load but also serve as creative tools for crafting fluid, expressive, and accessible interactions. Students will explore artistic approaches to interface design, working with a range of technologies like spatial computing, circuit bending, scripting, and fabrication, to construct human-centered, inclusive interfaces that enable meaningful, artistic experiences that deepen the connection between users and their surrounding environment. 1 Course Unit
This studio course introduces students to the world of print media and circulation through techniques in Risograph (a high-speed digital printing system developed in Japan in the 1980s), xerography, and letterpress, focusing particularly on the format of posters and artists' ephemera. Beginning with the Adobe Creative Suite, students will create their own broadsides, flyers, announcement cards, and print-based installations throughout the course, exploring ways in which artists and designers make use of the printed form to disseminate information; initiate happenings; advertise events; or foment change. Students will learn about some of the most significant producers working within this realm--from Dada to punk bands in the '70s to contemporary hybrid publishing collectives--and develop skills in page layout, typography, and design; digital to analog pre-press and post-print production methods; and mechanized and hand-pulled press operations. The course includes a field trip to NYC. 1 Course Unit
Cultures of Making is an integrative studio that explores new frontiers of design that enable, empower, and interrogate the human in the 21st century. We will take the human body, identity, or image as a site of investigation and design new types of products for it. Through our designs, we will raise questions about the motivations behind quantifying ourselves, desires for being permanently available and connected, complacency with not having privacy or intimacy, and eagerness to substitute craft, labor, and decision-making with intelligent systems from self-driving cars to painting bots and trading algorithms. This studio will pursue a research - and production-oriented format. We will incorporate techniques and technologies from fields as diverse as printed electronics, biochemical fabrication, machine learning and robotics to develop applications that respond to the emergent perceptions of the human for its individual, social, or environmental identity. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 5016 1 Course Unit r DSGN 2510 Biological Design This course is a research-based design studio that introduces new materials, fabrication, and prototyping techniques to develop a series of design proposals in response to the theme: Biological Design. The studio introduces life sciences and biotechnologies to designers, artists, and non-specialists to develop creative and critical propositions that address the social, cultural, and environmental needs of the 21st century.
This course is a research-based design studio that introduces new materials, fabrication, and prototyping techniques to develop a series of design proposals in response to the theme: Biological Design. The studio introduces life sciences and biotechnologies to designers, artists, and non-specialists to develop creative and critical propositions that address the social, cultural, and environmental needs of the 21st century.Fall or SpringPrerequisite: DSGN 00101 Course Unit
This studio course will introduce methods of material selection and fabrication with the goal of developing evocative and effective designs. We will learn parametric modeling techniques that allow visualization to begin before all the requirements of design are known. We will implement techniques that allow us to structurally test and optimize forms to be stronger, lighter, to fail more predictably, or to function efficiently. The class will work identity to materials with properties that introduce new structural or conceptual possibilities for our designs. For each project, we will use a broad range or fabrication techniques for metals, natural and syntheic materials. The goal of this course is to develop a creative approach towards learning to work with unfamiliar tools and materials. 1 Course Unit
Information Design and Visualization is an introductory course that explores the structures of information (text, numbers, images, sounds, video, etc.) and presents strategies for designing effective visual communication appropriate for various users and audiences. The course seeks to articulate a vocabulary of information visualization and find new design forms for an increasingly complex culture.
Design Future(s) is production-oriented studio which explores the relationship between critical design and emerging technologies. Students learn how to work with sensing, machine learning, robotics, and biofabrication to explore what it means to design in response to the social, cultural, and environmental realities of our times. The course is organized through hands-on workshops, lectures, design and critique sessions to develop both technical skills and learn about new design methodologies. Every semester, the studio is developed around a specific theme (i.e., future of body and labor, future of identity, future interfaces) and work towards developing a discursive and multi- disciplinary understanding of "future" that is informed by methodologies outside the traditional Western design canon. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 5010 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1529
DSGN 2580Artificial Intelligence in Art: Redefining1
Creativity in the 21st Century History & Theory Requirements 1 Select one of the following: 1 Seminar in Design (DSGN 3000-3999) OR - 1 Seminar in Fine Arts (FNAR 3000-FNAR 3999) OR - 1 Course with Attribute ADTH (https:// catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/adth/) Design Elective 2 Select two electives from the following categories: Design Studio Electives (DSGN 0000-2999) OR - Fine Arts Studio Electives (FNAR 0000-2999) OR - Courses with Attribute ADEL (https:// catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/adel/) 6 Total Course Units 6 Course fulfills a College of Arts and Sciences sector requirement (Sector IV: Humanities and Social Sciences). The degree and major requirements displayed are intended as a guide for students entering in the Fall of 2026 and later. Students should consult with their academic program regarding final certifications and requirements for graduation.
This seminar explores a range of theories, concepts, and thought patterns that shape different disciplines of design. From critical science studies to object-orient ontology and speculative design, it discusses how theoretical frameworks drive innovation, critique, and user experience. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
What is research? What is knowledge? And how do practitioners in different fields systematically investigate and study reality? This course explores the intersection of creative practice and research as a method for creating meaningful, conceptually grounded art and design. Students will investigate how diverse forms of inquiry—such as data collection, scientific experimentation, fieldwork, interviews, cultural research—can serve as catalysts for artistic production. Emphasis will be placed on developing strategies for transforming information, data, and lived experience into visual and multimedia works. Through readings, discussions, case studies of contemporary artists and designers, students will critically examine the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of working with research in the arts. The course encourages experimentation across media while fostering rigorous methodologies, clear documentation practices, reflective writing, and hands-on projects. By the end of the semester, students will produce a research-driven project that demonstrates both their ability to engage deeply with a chosen subject and to translate complex ideas into compelling artistic forms.
The course will explore the changing relationship during the modern era between design (structure, model, plan of a work of art) and language (metaphor for a system of communication; speech, writing, literature). Our readings and visual presentations will focus on topics in the decorative arts, painting, architecture, typography and visual communication. We will focus on primary sources in order to situate our inquiry in a larger historical context. The discussion will center on claims about the inherent meaning of form, discuss different roles for design - as an ideological statement, as an agent of social change, and as an idiosyncratic expression. Topics will also include the search for a universal language, attempts at bridging the perceived gap between spoken and written language, and the impact of visual form on the meaning of literary texts (particularly when the author has been involved in the publication process). Students can suggest additional topics related to their field of study.
This studio focuses on providing digital skills to conceptualize, produce and disseminate design products. Through workshops, software training sessions and labs, students will engage with different design professionals and learn state-of-the art tools used in interactive media, UI/UX, modeling and fabrication design. Students will also learn ways to work with open source software and have a chance to build their own design tools through creative programming exercises. The course does not require any technical background, but assumes basic familiarity with visual design tools (i.e., Adobe Creative Suite). 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
DSGN 3060Futures for All: Reimagining social equality through art and
technology How can art become a form of activism? How does design shape social equality? This course investigates how technological media shape culture and society, and how artists and designers can actively reshape these dynamics through art and design. We will engage in the practice of "speculative design", and tactical design using various digital tools to envision different futures, reflecting on social, political, and ethical implications of various technologies. Exploring the relationship between digital and physical realities, students will utilize their skills in art and design while applying them to critical social discourse and activism. Students will also develop skills in active reading, critical analysis, and scholarly writing. 1 Course Unit
How does scientific research produce and reinforce concepts of gender? How is sexism propagated through technological media? This course investigates how scientific and technological media shape culture and society, particularly through the lens of gender and sexuality. Engaging in interdisciplinary art making, students will use various technological media to reflect on the social, political, and ethical domains of technoscientific feminism. Exploring the relationship between digital and physical realities, students will engage art and design with critical social discourse and gender theory. Students will also develop skills in active reading, critical analysis, and scholarly writing. By the end of the course, students will have created a unique work of art that imagines more empowered, equitable futures. 1 Course Unit
DSGN 3080Care as Revolution: Socially Engaged Art and Design
In the exploitative cycles of production and consumption fueled by late stage capitalism, are there alternative ways to reimagine systems of support and mutual care? Through the lens of socially engaged art and design, students will look at a range of primary sources from artists and designers who have created participatory works that challenge traditional structures of power and integrate practices of care into their local communities. With a focus on decommodified labor and care work, students will analyze why and how certain types of labor have been devalued historically. Students will read and analyze historical and current texts related to feminist economics, art as social action, and socially engaged design. Through a scholarly lens, we will evaluate the radical nature of acts of care as a critical framework through which we can imagine more equitable futures. At the end of the semester, students will present their own unique works that contribute to this discourse. 1 Course Unit
DSGN 3100Interrogative Design: Cultural Prosthetics
The course is open to students interested in pursuing artistic, design and research projects that interrogate, and proactively respond to the existential, communicative and survival needs of the estranged, marginalized and excluded persons and social groups, while addressing the unacceptability of conditions that produce such needs. In the words of art theorist Rosalyn Deutsche, the ‘utopia’ of interrogative design is ‘based on the hope that its very function will render it obsolete'. The course will consist of readings, discussions, and presentations related to the fields and methods of interrogative, critical and speculative design, 'cultural prosthetics', 'scandalizing functionalism', forensic design, monument participatory animation, and, most importantly, on the ideation, experimentation, development, and presentation of students’ original projects. After a short introductory assignment, the students - individually or in teams- will work on a selected by them project to be advanced and discussed in class during the semester, presented at the midterm and at the final review, with the response and input from guest critics. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 5100 1 Course Unit
How should we think about the future amid worlds on edge? What is an inevitable versus a contingent course of events? What role do humans and non-humans, machines, animals, and plants play as agents of futurity in the context of the Anthropocene? This seminar explores these pressing questions, linking multiple sources of knowledge production—biological, medical, ecological, engineering, economic, and anthropological— with manifestations of the future. It starts with the basic premise that futures are made, molded by competing material, economic, and creative desires and possibilities, and not foreordained. Innovating futures also entails unexpected ethical and technical entanglements that current forms of knowledge cannot always anticipate. Drawing from readings in anthropology, the social studies of science and technology, Indigenous studies, as well as from engineering, AI, and scientific journals and films, we explore tensions between knowledge and uncertainty on the one hand, and ethics and innovation on the other. With these tensions in mind, we consider the myriad of agents whose role will be vital to shaping planetary futures—as well as how alternative futures, especially among communities confronting systemic inequalities and colonial and race- based injustices, are imagined and realized. From the climate crises to the ongoing pandemics, militarization, and mass migrations that have torn apart social fabrics, we will learn to become ‘technologists of the future’—that is, individuals and collectives with the tools to realize more inclusive, flourishing, and just futurities. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: ANTH 2080 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1531
How does matter transform into material, and back again? What hidden labor, sites, social and ecological costs and processes go into the production of “raw” materials? And why-- for artists, designers, architects, preservationists, creative educators, builders, educators and anyone working with materials-- do these realities matter? This course connects arts and design learners to considerations, sites, and cycles around sourcing, production and disposal of the defining materials of their creative fields (ex. paper, clay, glass, “the internet”), laying groundwork for creative practice rooted in social and ecological awareness, repair and care. A hybrid research seminar and studio investigation, the structure of this course alternates between reading and response, discussion and research and time for responsive “making” and material experimentation/ synthesis. Field trip(s) to sites of material interest and guest visitor(s) will vary each year, with an ongoing partnership with RAIR Philly, an arts residency located in a waste management facility. In this course, students will learn key terms and concerns around material sustainability, discard studies, land and labor relations vis-a-vis creative work. Students will formulate individual or group questions around a specific material or condition of materiality, leading to a final independent project. This course will engage students in forming a material ethics to guide future creative work. Also Offered As: FNAR 3250 1 Course Unit
Undergraduate Fine Arts independent study course for students pursuing advanced, specialized, indecently-driven course work. This course must be taught by a full-time faculty member.
This rigorous pair of courses, one offered in the Fall and one offered in the Spring semester, are designed as the capstone of the Design major and are required for all graduating Design seniors. They can only be taken in the senior year.
(Spring) Art and Design Electives 4 Select any combination of four FNAR and DSGN courses OR - Courses with Attribute ADEL (https:// catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/adel/) Total Course Units 34 You may count no more than one course toward both a Major and a Sector requirement. For Exceptions, check the Policy Statement (http:// www.college.upenn.edu/sectors-policy/). Core studio requirements may be taken as early as freshman year and in any order as long as prerequisites are met. Majors must take the Senior Seminar Project in consecutive semesters of their senior year. Art and Design Electives can be taken in any order as long as prerequisites are met. Fine Arts and Design courses can be found on the department website 2 (https://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/undergraduate/courses/). The degree and major requirements displayed are intended as a guide 3 for students entering in the Fall of 2026 and later. Students should consult with their academic program regarding final certifications and requirements for graduation. Sample Plan of Study Course Title Course
This course is an introduction to the fundamental perception, representation, aesthetics, and design that shape today's visual culture. It addresses the way artists and designers create images; design with analog and digital tools; communicate, exchange, and express meaning over a broad range of media; and find their voices within the fabric of contemporary art, design, and visual culture. Emphasis is placed on building an extended form of visual literacy by studying and making images using a variety of representation techniques; learning to organize and structure two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, and designing with time-based and procedural media. Students learn to develop an individual style of idea-generation, experimentation, iteration, and critique as part of their creative and critical responses to visual culture.
Last century, the digital revolution transformed every aspect of our lives. It shaped every design discipline and defined the ways we imagine and fabricate anything from images to everyday products to clothing, cars, buildings, and megacities. Today, design is going through other technical and conceptual revolutions. We design with biotechnologies, fall in love in Virtual Reality with AI bots, rent our cognitive labor throug cryptocurrencies. Our creative capabilities, on the other hand, are bounded by a polluted, over-crowded, and resource-constrained planet that is suffering major income and educational inequality. Design After the Digital interrogates the role of design for this century. This seminar surveys the conceptual and technical developments in the past decade to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of design, science, and technology. We will study how new design and fabrication methods shape what we eat, what we wear, how we form opinions and express ourselves. The goal will be to develop new literacies of design that will help us acclimate better to realities of the century as creative and critical citizens who can shape its products and values.
Digital Illustration is a course designed to expose students to the diverse techniques and approaches used in creating digital illustration for print publication. Course assignments will include two-dimensional animation storyboard rendering, figure illustration, technical diagram illustration, photographic retouching and enhancing. Digital applications will include morphing with layers, surface cloning, three-dimensional modeling and spatial transformation of scenes and objects. Students completing this course will possess the capability to design and plan creatively and skillfully execute finished artwork.
"Open Book" will focus on visual communication of information. It will address two methods of inquiry and the corresponding means of visual representation: the objective, well structured research of facts and images, and the creative process of their subjective evaluation and restatement. Students will propose a topic based on their area of interest and engage in a focused, semester-long exploration, which they will present in the form of a designed and printed book.
This course explores typography in the context of other arts, styles and movements to understand how aesthetic and cultural values of a given period manifest themselves in the typographic form. We explore typography both as a means to organize information and as an expressive visual medium. The course format is divided between studio projects and seminar (lectures and discussions), including visits to the Rare Book Collection and the Common Press for presentations and workshops.
Visual Narrative is an introduction to the practice of storytelling with images. From news and information to art, law, and science, visual storytelling is a critical aspect of creating and navigating contemporary culture. This course is situated at the intersection of design, art, and visual culture, focusing on relevant forms and topics including the photo essay, information design and visual explanation, the photographic sequence in contemporary art, scenario design and concept visualization. It proposes that studying and making sequential images and visual essays in a wide range of media- comics and graphic novels, propaganda, environments and installations, social media, animation, video, and digital media- are critical to understanding culture. The course immerses students in the study of narrative craft and creation of visual stories covering topics relevant to designers and photographers. Beginning with the photo series an the photo documentary tradition, the course evolves through multimedia narrative and non-narrative forms. Students will explore principles of narrative construction in design and photography through lecture, studio projects, and with presentations by visiting artists designers, and photographers. 1 Course Unit
This course introduces methods of modeling, texturing, and rendering human and animal figures. Students will study anatomical bone and muscle structures, and then employ this knowledge as they develop polygonal models for real-time 3D simulations or gaming environments, high-resolution renderings, and rapid prototyping.
Book and Publication Design will focus on the theory and professional practice of designing multi-page publications. Students will analyze formal structures of different types of book-literature and poetry, fiction and non-fiction compilations, illustrated volumes such as art catalogues, monographs, and textbooks, and serial editions-discussing both traditional and experimental approaches. The format of the course will be split between theoretical and historical evaluations of book formats by drawing on the Van Pelt Rare Book collection - and studio time where students will design books with attention to the format's conceptual relationship to the material at hand with a focus on typography and page layout, as well as understanding production methods of printing and binding. In addition to the conventions of page layout students will examine paratextual elements (title page, practices of pagination and other internal structuring, content lists and indexes, and colophons, notes and marginalia, end-leaves, binding etc.). Prerequisite: DSGN 0010 or permission from the instructor.
Animation can be disarming and effective when used for climate communication. The animation toolkit includes the implementation of metaphor within stories, alluring hand-drawn visualizations, illustrative views, dynamic transformations of visual forms, and cinematic sequences that reveal the cause and effect of human action. As the instructors of this studio have discovered in their own work, it is crucial that animators collaborate with climate scientists and that research be a component throughout the whole process, from script-writing and storyboarding to the animatic and the final product. This collaboration guarantees accuracy, relevance, and effective audience-targeting. What scientists value is the ability of animation to convey complex information in engaging and comprehensible ways. In this course, we will form small production teams that will partner with climate researchers at Penn and other centers and institutions to produce animated videos that meet their communication needs. Students in the course will use hand-drawn and collage animation to produce persuasive videos that communicate , emerging risks and obstacles to climate action as well as solutions and new perspectives.
Practicum provides a real world experience for students interested in solving design problems for non-profit and community organizations. The studio works with two clients each semester, and previous projects have included print design, web design, interpretive signage and exhibit interactives. All projects are real and will result in a portfolio-ready finished product. Students will participate in a full design experience including design, client interaction, presentations, production, and project management. In addition, students will take field trips, meet professionals and go on studio visits.
Advanced 3D Modeling will give students the opportunity to refine skills in modeling, texturizing, lighting, and rendering with an emphasis on the evolution of ideas through constant revision based on class critique. Students will use a variety of industry standard software packages, including but not limited to Maya and Mudbox to compose complex environments. Projects are designed to give students the opportunity to work with original content with a simulated production environment.
This course will explore advanced commercial, public and personal forms of visual communication. Emphasis will be placed on creative problem solving with consideration for audience. Discussion of design history, current ideology and future design applications will inform individual student projects. Work generated in this studio can be used build a portfolio. Prerequisite: Permission from instructor if prerequisites are not met.
Cultures of Making is an integrative studio that explores new frontiers of design that enable, empower, and interrogate the human in the 21st century. We will take the human body, identity, or image as a site of investigation and design new types of products for it. Through our designs, we will raise questions about the motivations behind quantifying ourselves, desires for being permanently available and connected, complacency with not having privacy or intimacy, and eagerness to substitute craft, labor, and decision-making with intelligent systems from self-driving cars to painting bots and trading algorithms. This studio will pursue a research - and production-oriented format. We will incorporate techniques and technologies from fields as diverse as printed electronics, biochemical fabrication, machine learning and robotics to develop applications that respond to the emergent perceptions of the human for its individual, social, or environmental identity.
This course is a research-based design studio that introduces new materials, fabrication, and prototyping techniques to develop a series of design proposals in response to the theme: Biological Design. The studio introduces life sciences and biotechnologies to designers, artists, and non-specialists to develop creative and critical propositions that address the social, cultural, and environmental needs of the 21st century.
The course introduces students to graphic design as a method of communication in which the interaction of formal elements—color, composition, typography, images—creates complex messages. During the semester, students develop coherent yet open-ended visual systems and apply them in a variety of contexts including posters, publications and architectural settings. Studio projects focus on both conceptual and formal aspects of visual communication such as creating visual metaphors and structuring information. Lectures and critiques offer theoretical grounding, while hands-on workshops present practical skills and techniques, opening the space for experimentation.
This studio course will introduce methods of material selection and fabrication with the goal of developing evocative and effective designs. We will learn parametric modeling techniques that allow visualization to begin before all the requirements of a design are known. We will implement techniques that allow us to structurally test and optimize forms to be stronger, lighter, to fail more predictably, or to function efficiently. The class will work to identify materials with properties that introduce new structural or conceptual possibilities for our designs. For each project, we will use a broad range of fabrication techniques for metals, natural and synthetic materials. The goal of the course is to develop a creative approach towards learning to work with unfamiliar tools and materials.
Information design and visualization is an introductory course that explores the structure of information (text, numbers, images, sounds, video, etc.) and presents strategies for designing effective visual communication appropriate for various users and audiences. The course seeks to articulate a vocabulary of information visualization and find new design forms for an increasingly complex culture.
This seminar explores a range of theories, concepts, and thought patterns that shape different disciplines of design. From critical science studies to object-orient ontology and speculative design, it discusses how theoretical frameworks drive innovation, critique, and user experience. 1 Course Unit
What is research? What is knowledge? And how do practitioners in different fields systematically investigate and study reality? This course explores the intersection of creative practice and research as a method for creating meaningful, conceptually grounded art and design. Students will investigate how diverse forms of inquiry—such as data collection, scientific experimentation, fieldwork, interviews, cultural research—can serve as catalysts for artistic production. Emphasis will be placed on developing strategies for transforming information, data, and lived experience into visual and multimedia works. Through readings, discussions, case studies of contemporary artists and designers, students will critically examine the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of working with research in the arts. The course encourages experimentation across media while fostering rigorous methodologies, clear documentation practices, reflective writing, and hands-on projects. By the end of the semester, students will produce a research-driven project that demonstrates both their ability to engage deeply with a chosen subject and to translate complex ideas into compelling artistic forms.
The course will explore the changing relationship during the modern era between design (structure, model, plan of a work of art) and language (metaphor for a system of communication; speech, writing, literature). Our readings and visual presentations will focus on topics in decorative arts, painting, architecture, typography and visual communication. We will focus on primary sources in order to situate our inquiry in a larger historical context. The discussion will center on claims about the inherent meaning of form, discuss different roles for design - as an ideological statement, as an agent of social change, and as an idiosyncratic expression. Topics will also include the search for a universal visual language, attempts at bridging the perceived gap between spoken and written language, and the impact of visual form on the meaning of literary texts (particularly when the author has been involved in the publication process). Students can suggest additional topics to their field of study.
This studio focuses on providing digital skills to conceptualize, produce and disseminate design products. Through workshops, software training sessions and labs, students will engage with different design professionals and learn state-of-the art tools used in interactive media, UI/UX, modeling and fabrication design. Students will also learn ways to work with open source software and have a chance to build their own design tools through creative programming exercises. The course does not require any technical background, but assumes basic familiarity with visual design tools (i.e., Adobe Creative Suite). 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1535
DSGN 5028Futures for All: Reimagining social equality through art and
technology How can art become a form of activism? How does design shape social equality? This course investigates how technological media shape culture and society, and how artists and designers can actively reshape these dynamics through art and design. We will engage in the practice of "speculative design", and "tactical design" using various digital tools to envision different futures, reflecting on social, political, and ethical implications of various technologies. Exploring the relationship between digital and physical realities, students will utilize their skills in art and design while applying them to critical social discourse and activism. Students will also develop skills in active reading, critical analysis, and scholarly writing. 1 Course Unit
How does scientific research produce and reinforce concepts of gender? How is sexism propagated through technological media? This course investigates how scientific and technological media shape culture and society, particularly through the lens of gender and sexuality. Engaging in interdisciplinary art making, students will use various technological media to reflect on the social, political, and ethical domains of technoscientific feminism. Exploring the relationship between digital and physical realities, students will engage art and design with critical social discourse and gender theory. Students will also develop skills in active reading, critical analysis, and scholarly writing. By the end of the course, students will have created a unique work of art that imagines more empowered, equitable futures. 1 Course Unit
This studio course introduces students to the world of print media and circulation through techniques in Risograph (a high-speed digital printing system developed in Japan in the 1980s), xerography, and letterpress, focusing particularly on the format of posters and artists' ephemera. Beginning with the Adobe Creative Suite, students will create their own broadsides, flyers, announcement cards, and print-based installations throughout the course, exploring ways in which artists and designers make use of the printed form to disseminate information; initiate happenings; advertise events; or foment change. Students will learn about some of the most significant producers working within this realm--from Dada to punk bands in the '70s to contemporary hybrid publishing collectives--and develop skills in page layout, typography, and design; digital to analog pre-press and post-print production methods; and mechanized and hand-pulled press operations. The course includes a field trip to NYC. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
DSGN 5080Care as Revolution: Socially Engaged Art and Design
In the exploitative cycles of production and consumption fueled by late stage capitalism, are there alternative ways to reimagine systems of support and mutual care? Through the lens of socially engaged art and design, students will look at a range of primary sources from artists and designers who have created participatory works that challenge traditional structures of power and integrate practices of care into their local communities. With a focus on decommodified labor and care work, students will analyze why and how certain types of labor have been devalued historically. Students will read and analyze historical and current texts related to feminist economics, art as social action, and socially engaged design. Through a scholarly lens, we will evaluate the radical nature of acts of care as a critical framework through which we can imagine more equitable futures. At the end of the semester, students will present their own unique works that contribute to this discourse. 1 Course Unit
DSGN 5090Projection as a Tool for Expression and Communication in
the Public Space The course will introduce students to projection as a tool of artistic expression and cultural communication. The purpose of the course is to prepare designers and artists for the projection-based Installations, and performances. Students' projects will take form of projections- animations of interior or exterior architectural and sculptural sites as well as inventions and presentations of wearable, portable, or mobile performative projects. The projects may require specific cultural research and a creative use of basic software, hardware, and physical modeling. Students will be encouraged to experiment with video projectors and micro-projectors in connection with available media devices, such as smart phones, speakers, monitors, sensors, or other input and output components, as well as the use of unconventional materials, and forms as projection “screens. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 2090 1 Course Unit
DSGN 5100Interrogative Design: Cultural Prosthetics
The course is open to students interested in pursuing artistic, design and research projects that interrogate, and proactively respond to the existential, communicative and survival needs of the estranged, marginalized and excluded persons and social groups, while addressing the unacceptability of conditions that produce such needs. In the words of art theorist Rosalyn Deutsche, the ‘utopia’ of interrogative design is ‘based on the hope that its very function will render it obsolete'. The course will consist of readings, discussions, and presentations related to the fields and methods of interrogative, critical and speculative design, 'cultural prosthetics', 'scandalizing functionalism', forensic design, monument participatory animation, and, most importantly, on the ideation, experimentation, development, and presentation of students’ original projects. After a short introductory assignment, the students - individually or in teams- will work on a selected by them project to be advanced and discussed in class during the semester, presented at the midterm and at the final review, with the response and input from guest critics. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 3100 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
DSGN 5200Procedural Design Systems for Virtual Environments
"Procedural Design Systems for Virtual Environments" challenges students to reconceptualize 3D design within digital and virtual ecosystems, not just as production but as concept creation. Embracing system-based workflows, the course delves into procedural modeling, shader creation, and optimization, all set within a software-agnostic framework. Central to this studio course is the concept of assets as "units of language" within larger digital narratives, driven by the use of design systems to ensure these assets are contextually coherent and resource-efficient. Through hands-on workshops, discussions, and tutorials, participants will master procedural workflows, preparing them to craft assets that are both technically robust and culturally relevant. Mutually Exclusive: DSGN 1200 1 Course Unit
This immersive media course explores the design and application of virtual, augmented, and mixed realities. It combines project-based learning with an understanding of the historical and cultural impacts of these technologies. Focused on immersive design principles and user experience, the course equips students with the necessary technical and artistic skills for creating interactive virtual environments. Through practical exercises and discussions, students will master immersive tools and techniques. The course culminates in a significant project that demonstrates students' critical perspective on immersive media and their ability to produce work with an artistic or design function relevant to their wider practice. 1 Course Unit
“Embodied Interfaces for Immersion” explores the design of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) for Extended Realities (VR, AR, Projection Mapping) to create immersive, human-centered, and embodied experiences in physical and virtual spaces. NUIs in this context not only aim to lower cognitive load but also serve as creative tools for crafting fluid, expressive, and accessible interactions. Students will explore artistic approaches to interface design, working with a range of technologies like spatial computing, circuit bending, scripting, and fabrication, to construct human-centered, inclusive interfaces that enable meaningful, artistic experiences that deepen the connection between users and their surrounding environment. 1 Course Unit
How does matter transform into material, and back again? What hidden labor, sites, social and ecological costs and processes go into the production of “raw” materials? And why-- for artists, designers, architects, preservationists, creative educators, builders, educators and anyone working with materials-- do these realities matter? This course connects arts and design learners to considerations, sites, and cycles around sourcing, production and disposal of the defining materials of their creative fields (ex. paper, clay, glass, “the internet”), laying groundwork for creative practice rooted in social and ecological awareness, repair and care. A hybrid research seminar and studio investigation, the structure of this course alternates between reading and response, discussion and research and time for responsive “making” and material experimentation/ synthesis. Field trip(s) to sites of material interest and guest visitor(s) will vary each year, with an ongoing partnership with RAIR Philly, an arts residency located in a waste management facility. In this course, students will learn key terms and concerns around material sustainability, discard studies, land and labor relations vis-a-vis creative work. Students will formulate individual or group questions around a specific material or condition of materiality, leading to a final independent project. This course will engage students in forming a material ethics to guide future creative work. 1 Course Unit
