Prepare for an influential role in the design world of today and tomorrow. Be part of a vibrant learning collective and connect with the NYC design community long before graduation day.
Develop your distinct design voice through practice in visual language, innovative processes, and emerging technologies while building a significant body of work.
Join a Collaborative Learning Community
Among students from a wide variety of fields, with a range of interests and experiences, you’ll collaborate closely and form relationships that foster creative exchange and mutual support during the program and long after.
“One of the most impactful parts of my experience at Pratt was its incredible community. Nothing fuels my creativity more than being surrounded by people from diverse backgrounds with unique perspectives and a shared openness to collaboration and idea exchange.”
Grace Hopkins, MFA Communications Design ’21 Read More
Connect with NYC’s Creative Network
Make inroads in the New York City design space through well-regarded public-facing events that create platforms for student work. Opening dialogues with industry professionals and the design community, you’ll form connections that will last beyond graduation.
Learn from Designers Shaping the Industry Today
You’ll work alongside professors who actively practice in graphic design, typography, book design, service design, UX/UI design, interaction design, digital publishing, branding, design strategy, writing, curating, research, and more. Within this interdisciplinary environment, you’ll find purpose and direction in your design practice.
A Celebrated Legacy in Design
Pratt Institute is an established authority in the design world with programs that equip students to lead in their industries. We have been educating designers for more than 40 years and are recognized as one of the top five most influential schools today in a survey of 10,000 design professionals by Graphic Design USA magazine.
The department’s graduates form a network of designers whose work influences the field today, including Stefan Sagmeister, Arem Duplessis, Cheryl D. Holmes Miller, Lance Wyman, Joseph Cuillier III, Aryn Beitz, Anuthin Wongsunkakon, and many others.
Customizable Curriculum
Our students come from many different disciplines and backgrounds, and our curriculum is designed to support that diversity. We encourage you to integrate your life experience, questions, and purpose into your design work and shape your own direction in communication design.
“Pratt encouraged students from diverse career backgrounds, so I wasn’t alone in pivoting to design. It was great to have writers, doctors, fashion designers, engineers, film makers, all at the same table talking about design.”
Shikha Subramaniam, MFA Communications Design ’17 Read More
STEM-designated Program
In our STEM-designated program, students gain the technical expertise and experience with cutting-edge technology, research methods, and critical practices that equips them to be design innovators.
Our terminal MFA degree program sits at the intersection of visual language, cultural criticism, and media studies. We prepare creatives to be confident, independent practitioners who are strategic technology users, innovative researchers, writers, pedagogues, and ultimately leaders in the communication design professions. Our students gain interdisciplinary knowledge that supports critical discourse and the development of a significant body of work characterized by experimentation, creativity, resiliency and include non-dominant ways of knowing, thinking, and doing.
Overview
In our program, we understand design as the myriad ways we create meaningful communications making complex information accessible, producing compelling experiences, and enacting social change. We support students by exploring many of these possibilities to find a disciplinary space in which to excel and find deep satisfaction. During the program the students accomplish versatility and expert capabilities with communications tools and strategies across numerous technologies, demonstrated through critical responses that understand design as collective action that address socio-economical and environmental issues.
What we believe
We believe designers are cultural actors who use their expertise to inform, persuade, and entertain in order to create the world they imagine. In our classes, students apply socio-ecologically sustainable processes and research to design transformative strategies for communication and interactions between people and communities that promote a diverse, equitable and just society.
Our students develop their voices as both designers and authors by creating and engaging design challenges within the program’s cross-disciplinary framework. Students approach design as a process of learning, a communal experience, and a process to enact change. Our program integrates situated knowledge and perspectives with histories, principles, and practices of communications design to support the creation of speculative artifacts, modes of representation, platforms, and systems serving intersectional identities and abilities.
After graduation
This program lays the foundation for both professional practice and academic careers. Graduates enter the professional world with advanced critical skills and an articulate body of work, prepared to work in print and digital media, typography, identity systems and branding, design strategy, social media, interaction design, motion design, environmental design, data visualization, information design, and user experience design.
We welcome students with previous experience in design and adjacent disciplines, but also professionals from different backgrounds. Please see application guidelines in the “Apply to Pratt” section.
Upon completion of their studies, students:
Upon completion of their studies, students apply socio-ecologically sustainable processes and research to design transformative strategies for communication and interactions between people and communities that promote a diverse, equitable and just society.
Integrate situated knowledge and perspectives with histories, principles, and practices of communications design to support the creation of speculative artifacts, modes of representation, platforms and systems serving intersectional identities and abilities.
Attain interdisciplinary knowledge that supports critical discourse and the development of a significant body of work characterized by experimentation, creativity, and resiliency and include non-dominant ways of knowing, thinking, and doing.
Accomplish versatility and expert capabilities with communications tools and strategies across numerous technologies, demonstrated through critical responses that recognize design as collective action that address socio-economical and environmental issues.
Graduate Studio: Technology A/B critically analyze and explore the tools, skills, and production methods of current and emerging technologies.
DES-720A/DES-720B
Graduate Studio: Visual Language A/B explores the principles and methodologies associated with the development of communication design as a visual language. DES-710A/DES-710B
Graduate Studio: Transformation Design A/B discusses how to transform the behaviors of individuals in desirable and sustainable ways, while creating meaningful experiences and interactions for people. DES-730A/DES-730B
Cross-Disciplinary Studio introduces the student to communications design as it interfaces with, and is influenced by, other design disciplines. It emphasizes collaboration and cross-disciplinarity while encouraging students to seek and solve design problems and issues that focus on community and social outreach. DES-741
The thesis arc is the core of our Master degree program. Thesis Arc courses model how professional design practice works at the highest level and offers invaluable skills to students who will pursue both professional and academic paths after graduation.
DES-796
All admitted applicants are considered by the academic department for generous scholarships, and awarded students are notified in their letter of admission.
These scholarships do not require a separate application; all admitted students are considered.
Student Work
Change Your Gaze
An MFA Communications Design class explores new ways of thinking and making, finding collaborators in the natural world.
This program lays the foundation for both professional practice and academic careers. You will find our graduates at the tops of their fields in print and digital media, typography, identity systems and branding, design strategy, social media, interaction design, motion design, environmental design, data visualization, information design, and user experience design. Graduates move on to a diverse selection of companies and institutions while many others become entrepreneurs, founding their own businesses.
Career Support for Life
Students and alumni can schedule one-on-one appointments with career strategists in Pratt’s Center for Career and Professional Development. A career strategist can work with you to develop your job/internship search strategies and life and business plans, as well as review résumés, cover letters, websites, and other marketing materials.
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Apply here.
You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York, and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. More info here.
