Mission
Designers no longer exclusively design things. They design experiences, interactions, and lifestyles—they define culture. The Bachelor of Design program will prepare students to become “lifestyle and experience designers”—designing innovative user/consumer products, experiences, brands, and lifestyle relevant solutions. It is a contemporary academic approach that integrates design thinking, making, processes, and methodologies with technology and entrepreneurship. Graduates will become unique, creatively charged, practice-ready professionals concerned with how we communicate to consumers and to each other, the products we use and interact with, and the perception and interaction among people, objects and ideas.
Working within collaborative educational environments that mirrors the profession, students will understand how design can be used to communicate meaningful messages, craft functional and beautiful objects, create compelling experiences, influence behavior, and make our interactions more efficient and our communities more livable. Students will develop a perspective that is broad and powerful, learn to implement design strategies for more competitive and productive commercial and social enterprises, and understand how design can drive business decisions and entrepreneurial efforts. Graduates will be prepared via mastery of the analytical, conceptual, creative, strategic, and technical skills required to advance the practice of design and contribute responsibly to the global community.
Internship/Career Experience
Prior to graduation, students must complete 120 hours of internship or career experience at a local design studio, advertising agency, entertainment studio, or publishing or marketing company. The internship or career experience must be accomplished in the junior or senior year and approved by the department chair. Woodbury’s Career Development Office offers a variety of programs, services, and resources to assist students in exploring careers and securing internships. The staff works with students one-on-one to develop successful internship search strategies in order to help students connect with employers through internship postings, résumé collections, on- and off-campus interview opportunities, alumni connections, and employer outreach in the United States.
Lecture Series
Students are required to attend lectures by professional designers each term. Industry professionals from both national and international arenas have spoken at Woodbury on various design topics including typography, logo development, entertainment media, motion graphics, information graphics, environmental graphics, and print.
Professional Affiliations
The Woodbury University Graphic Design program is affiliated with AIGA, the professional association for design, whose mission is to advance design as a professional craft, strategic tool, and vital cultural force. Students, with a faculty sponsor, run the Woodbury University AIGA student group. Officers are elected from the student body each year to plan local networking and fundraising events for the group. Students participate in the local Los Angeles chapter events, including studio tours, guest speakers, scholarship competitions, exhibitions, conferences, and portfolio review events. They also network with industry professionals and students from other AIGA- affiliated schools and participate in special projects sponsored by local design studios.
Student Work
The University reserves the right to retain student work for archival, exhibition, and promotional purposes, including print and web formats.
Computer Requirements
Students are responsible for email and ISP accounts; student-owned computers used on campus should have a network and/or wireless card for access to the University’s Wi-Fi network. The Department requires a laptop computer, the use of which is mandatory beginning with the second year. However, it is strongly recommended for first-semester studio courses as well. The system must be compatible with existing on-campus computer labs.
Program Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this program, students will:
1. Demonstrate competence with principles of visual organization, including the ability to work with visual elements in two and three dimensions, color theory and its applications, and drawing, and present work that demonstrates perceptual acuity, conceptual understanding, and technical facility at a professional entry level in communication and product design.
2. Demonstrate familiarity with the historical achievements, current major issues, processes, and directions in communication and product design, and be able to analyze works of art/design from both Western and non-Western cultures perceptively and to evaluate them critically.
3. Have exhibited their work and participate in critiques and discussions of their work and the work of others.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the common elements and vocabulary of design and of the interaction of these elements, and be able to employ this knowledge in analysis, including the ability to place works of art/design in historical, cultural, and stylistic contexts.
5. Understand how design theories, principles, and processes have evolved through history and possess an ability to use this knowledge to address various types of contemporary problems.
6. Demonstrate the ability to develop creative approaches and strategies for planning, producing, and disseminating various design solutions, including constructing narratives and scenarios describing user experiences.
7. Possess fluency in the use of the formal vocabulary and concepts of design in response to design problems, understand and apply critical theory and semiotics in defining and solving design problems, and be able to develop informed considerations of the spatial, temporal, and kinesthetic relationships among form, meaning, and behavior in design solutions.
8. Understand how artifacts, designed experiences and communications are created and made, what makes them valuable, how they are realized and distributed, and how they are related to environmental and societal issues and responsible design.
9. Effectively create user experiences and design solutions using typography, images, diagrams, motion, sequencing, color, and other such elements with an understanding of human factors, applied ergonomics, contextual inquiry, user preference studies, and usability assessments.
10. Effectively utilize basic research and analysis – including using databases, asking questions, observing users, developing prototypes, interpreting findings practically – combined with quantitative and qualitative findings regarding people and contexts to support design decisions.
11. Demonstrate collaborative skills and the ability to work effectively in interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams to solve complex problems.
12. Use technology in multiple ways, including the functional capability to shape and create technological tools and systems to address design problems, and recognize and analyze the social, cultural, and economic implications of technology on message creation, production, and human behavior.
13. Demonstrate functional knowledge of professional design practices and processes including professional and ethical behaviors and intellectual property issues such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights; basic business practices; entrepreneurship and marketing; manufacturing; and ecological and social responsibility.
14. Have had opportunities for work experiences, internships, and collaborative programs with professional and industry groups.
Fundamental Curricular Currency
To maintain fundamental curricular currency, professional undergraduate programs in design are expected to prepare students to understand and work with the following:
Context. The role of the designer is not only to achieve the goodness of fit between form and context, but also to determine how much of the surrounding context will be considered as a specific design problem is addressed and solved. Basic competence in both framing and solving design problems is essential for graduates. In all design specializations, this competence includes knowledge of and ability to address the following:
1. Usefulness. The value of communication, objects, environments, or services to persons and society.
2. Usability. The cognitive or physical ease, efficiency, and satisfaction of people as they learn and use communication, objects, products, environments, systems, or services.
3. Desirability. The perceived emotional, social, or cultural benefits of communication, objects, products, environments, systems, or services.
4. Sustainability. The consequences of design in interdependent systems, lifespan of designed objects, and use and disposal of resources.
5. Feasibility. The technological ability to produce and/or disseminate and/or distribute
communication, objects, environments, or services.
6. Viability. The economic potential and consequences.
Complexity. The context for design problem solving is increasingly complex and design activity is typically nested within a web of interconnected systems. Basic understanding of how such complexity is addressed and expressed in design practice is essential. Competencies include familiarity with:
1. Transdisciplinary/Interdisciplinary collaboration. Basic understanding of the nature, content, and process of trans/interdisciplinary work, including experiences working in transdisciplinary teams toward the solution of design problems.
2. Designing at the level of systems. Basic knowledge of means for considering, evaluating, and anticipating the consequences of design action in a variety of systems, even when working at the level of products and components.
3. Geographic dispersal of effort. Basic understanding of the management and labor structures and issues associated with the design, production, dissemination, and distribution of communication, goods, and services in the global context.
4. Issues of lifespan and sustainability. Ability to justify the use of resources and identify long-term consequences of design action in their solutions to problems.
Designing for and with People. Contemporary design practice addresses varying levels of
responsibility between designers and users. For example, control for design decisions can shift proportionally from project to project and purpose to purpose. Knowledge and skills to understand and begin to work in this environment are essential. Competencies include the ability to:
1. Choose and apply research and other methods for understanding various users’ wants, needs, and patterns of behavior.
2. Recognize social, cultural, ability, and perspective differences on scales ranging from individual to global.
3. Consider and evaluate strategies for addressing or resolving competing values in the p
processes.
Technology. A rapidly evolving technological context presents both challenges and opportunities for design education. Competencies include the ability to:
1. Functional understanding of how to continue learning technology, recognizing that
technological change is constant.
2. Ability to conduct critical evaluations of different technologies in specific design problem contexts, including the placement of technical issues in the service of human-centered priorities and matching relationships between technologies and the people expected to use them.
3. Functional capability to shape and create technological tools and systems to address design problems and further design goals.
4. Ability to recognize and analyze the social, cultural, and economic implications of technology on message creation and production and on human behavior, and to incorporate results into design decisions.
Research. Research is an integral component in designing for and with people in a context that encompasses complexity and technology. Research sensibilities and comprehensive capabilities are gained through study and practice over a lifetime. At the undergraduate professional degree level, basic understanding of research methods, and the ability to read and use findings in studio projects are essential. This competence includes basic knowledge and skills to develop research-supported design decisions for specific circumstances that address:
1. What people want and need.
2. What is needed that does not exist.
3. How people learn and know.
4. What particular contexts demand.
5. How things get planned, produced, and distributed.
6. The effects of design action on people, communities, the environment, and the future.
7. Tools, theories, and methods for exploring these issues.
Assessment Process
Portfolio Requirements: Freshman Students
All incoming freshmen are required to submit a portfolio that demonstrates their artistic perspective, skills, and interests. This helps faculty better understand how to support each student in achieving their academic and professional goals. Applicants should include a short description of each work, along with project specifications.
Portfolio Requirements: Transfer Students
Transfer students are required to submit a digital portfolio conveying the range of work completed in earlier programs. Submissions should demonstrate the applicant’s artistic perspective and range of technical and digital skills. Transfer credits for Experience Design courses that were not part of an articulation agreement with your previous institution will be awarded based on a portfolio evaluation.
Required for evaluation of non-articulation agreement courses:
· Three major art and design projects from each studio course you wish to transfer (2–3 minimum)
· Description of each project, including project specifications and/or requirements
· Course title and number
· Name of institution where course was taken
Formative Assessment Experiences
Progress Portfolio Review—At the end of the sophomore year, students are required to submit a comprehensive portfolio showcasing their work from each major design studio. The portfolio should demonstrate adequate development of knowledge and skills in Experience Design, as well as the ability to integrate that cumulative knowledge into original, creative, and meaningful visual communication. Portfolios are reviewed by a panel composed of design faculty members and the department chair. BDES 203 Experience Design Studio 3 is a corequisite for the Progress Portfolio. Students who do not pass the Progress Portfolio must follow the review committee’s recommendations for remediation and resubmit their portfolio for evaluation.
Summative Assessment Experiences
Capstone Courses— To demonstrate the required professional and design competencies before graduation, students must successfully complete BDES 492 Degree Project and BDES 493 Portfolio and Professional Practices. BDES 492 serves as the program’s capstone project, providing students with the opportunity to develop and complete a design project that reflects their ability to synthesize the knowledge and experience gained throughout their studies. Students are expected to apply theoretical research to a self-initiated graphic design project, producing a rigorous, well-resolved body of work that exemplifies a high level of critical thinking, technical skill, and craftsmanship.
Results of Learning— Both studio and lecture courses require students to produce design projects aligned with the specific learning outcomes of each course. At the end of each term, student work is reviewed by industry professionals and department faculty. In addition, evidence of learning is assessed through the Progress Portfolio at the end of the second year. These portfolios must include project samples from all completed studio courses.
During their senior year, students develop professional portfolios, which are also reviewed by industry professionals and assessed by faculty members and the Experience Design Advisory Board. Student self-assessment is an essential component of both the Progress and Senior Portfolio processes, as well as the internship experience.
Program Specific Academic Standards
Below-average work is not acceptable in a professional degree program. A minimum grade of “C” is required in all design studio courses to advance in the studio sequence. Any student who receives a grade below “C” must successfully repeat that studio course before enrolling in the next one. Additionally, students are not permitted to enroll in more than 12 studio units in a single semester.