First Graduate-Level Program in the U.S. Dedicated to Design Criticism

School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York City, will offer the country’s first graduate-level degree program dedicated to critical writing about design, beginning in the fall of 2008. The Master of Fine Arts in Design Criticism will prepare graduates for careers as design critics, journalists, curators, educators and design managers, by providing the intellectual tools for researching, analyzing, evaluating and chronicling all aspects of design. The program was developed by design authority Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department at SVA, and writer, critic and educator Alice Twemlow, who will chair the new MFA Design Criticism Department.

"Public awareness of design and its social, economic, and even political implications is growing," says Twemlow. "With this new program we aim to build design criticism as a discipline and contribute to public discourse with new writing and thinking that is imaginative, historically informed, and socially accountable."

Faculty will include: Kurt Andersen, co-creator and host, Studio 360, a weekly arts and design program produced by WNYC and Public Radio International; Paola Antonelli, curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Michael Bierut, partner, Pentagram, an international design firm; Ralph Caplan, writer, design consultant and author, By Design (Fairchild Books & Visuals, 2005); Peter Hall, design writer, author, Sagmeister: Made You Look (Thames & Hudson, 2001) and co-editor, Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist (Princeton Architectural Press, 2000); Jessica Helfand, partner, Winterhouse design studio, and co-founder, Design Observer, a widely-read blog about design; Steven Heller, author, former art director of The New York Times Book Review and co-chair, MFA Design Department at SVA; Karrie Jacobs, former editor, Dwell, and writer at large, Metropolis; Julie Lasky, editor-in-chief, I.D.: The International Design Magazine; Cathy Leff, director, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, a museum of design and the decorative arts in Miami Beach; and Phil Patton, design journalist and columnist, The New York Times and Esquire.

The role of design as an aesthetic, social and economic force is the subject of increasing attention. Mainstream news outlets, the business press and lifestyle magazines routinely cover design, and it is the focus of major exhibitions and even entire museums. Yet even as forums for design commentary have multiplied, professionals in the field have voiced the need for more intellectually rigorous approaches to design criticism.

"Design touches the lives of everyone," says Twemlow. "Yet to understand the role of design in contemporary life requires a grasp of not just how things look, but also how they are made, used and, increasingly, how they decay. Design criticism explores all of these and requires knowledge of history, philosophy, politics, economics, ethics and ecology."

"Design criticism is still in its infancy,"says Heller, co-founder of the MFA in Design Criticism, "but the range of venues for critical discourse has increased in the multimedia era. This program will address more than just conventional authorship, enabling students to apply their critical skills to a range of media including radio, television, film, and exhibitions."

The two-year, 64-credit curriculum emphasizes the skills and knowledge relevant to those who wish to write about design on a full-time, professional basis; or pursue alternative critical practices, such as curating, publishing or teaching. Drawing on the broadest possible definition of design, the curriculum includes graphic, Web and product design as well as fashion, urban planning and network systems. In preparing students for academic or journalistic pursuits, the curriculum couples a rich theoretical framework with significant opportunities for practical experience. Students will be asked to borrow from, and expand upon, the critical vocabularies and methodologies used in the criticism of literature, film and art, and design history. Students will produce tangible documents of their critical practice, such as books, blogs, documentaries, course syllabi, conferences and exhibitions.

In addition to courses taught by core faculty, there will be an ongoing program of lectures, workshops and seminars by distinguished international critics, authors, journalists, curators, designers, editors and historians. The program will culminate in a thesis, which students will present at an annual public conference dedicated to design criticism, to be inaugurated in the spring of 2009.

In launching the new MFA in Design Criticism, SVA builds on a 60-year history in the education of designers and strengthens its commitment to serving as an international resource for the study of design. The College currently enrolls more than 600 candidates for the BFA in Graphic Design and the MFA in Design, and approximately 300 adults study graphic design in the Division of Continuing Education. In October of 2006, SVA opened the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives, which makes accessible works by world-class designers Milton Glaser, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, and Henry Wolf.

Alice Twemlow writes for Eye, Design Issues, I.D., Print, New York magazine and The Architect’s Newspaper. Her essays are included in the books ELSE/WHERE: MAPPING (University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006) and Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (Allworth Press, 2007). She joined the faculty at SVA in 2006 to teach Critical Thinking in the MFA Design Department. She has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons The New School for Design, Yale University School of Art, California Institute of the Arts, University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Royal College of Art in London. Twemlow organized the conferences "Voice: AIGA National Design Conference 2002," and "Looking Closer: AIGA Conference on Design History and Criticism" (with Steven Heller), among others. She has curated exhibitions on design in New York, London, and Berlin. Twemlow holds an MA in History of Design from the Research Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the School of Humanities at the Royal College of Art, London, where she is currently working on her PhD about the politics of design criticism.

School of Visual Arts is a comprehensive college of art and design offering the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in advertising; animation; cartooning; computer art; film and video; fine arts; graphic design; illustration; interior design; photography; and visual and critical studies; the degree of Master of Fine Arts in art criticism and writing; computer art; design; design criticism; fine arts; illustration as visual essay; photography, video and related media; and the degree of Master of Professional Studies in art therapy and digital photography; and to confer the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching in art education.

School of Visual Arts is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. SVA is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), the International Association of Independent Schools for Art and Design (AIAS) and the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD).

School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City is an established leader and innovator in the education of artists. From its inception in 1947, the faculty has been comprised of professionals working in the arts and art-related fields. SVA provides an environment that nurtures creativity, inventiveness and experimentation, enabling students to develop a strong sense of identity and a clear direction of purpose.