At Pratt, we see communications design as a close alignment of thinking and making. Our curriculum pairs critical, cultural observation with emerging technologies and tools to help you form your own design process.
Our multifaceted and interdisciplinary Communications Design courses happen within a studio culture that invites exchange of individual perspectives, critique, visual literacy, media fluency, experiential learning, and innovative formal outcomes. You’ll explore meaningful visual forms through research, historical and contemporary contexts, experimentation, audience, technology, and play. The Illustration emphasis includes studio courses in advanced storytelling, socio-political commentary, and authorship. Electives include graphic novels, animation and 3D modeling, independent publishing, production design and character design.
The design studio is at the core of your educational experience at Pratt. It is a creative space and a community in microcosm, from which we connect to the larger community. We believe education takes place in the studio and the classroom and that the work in the studio benefits the student’s growth through an exchange of ideas, skills, and aspirations. Working with your peers in the studio deepens knowledge of the opportunities inherent in form-making and design exploration.
Maker Spaces and Labs
Sustainability and material exploration drive our passion for making. We are hands-on and immersive; using our many production labs, any communication design student can discover, iterate and refine their investigations across different media. Learn more
Thesis
By the end of your senior year, you’ll complete a thesis that reflects and shapes your future practice. Your thesis is presented at the annual design show, a public event attended by industry leaders and potential employers. Pratt Shows 2023.
Study Abroad
Immersing yourself in another culture is an incredible experience that can extend the boundaries of creativity. Study abroad programs are an integral part of the college experience, and Pratt has deep connections with university partners around the world. See where you can go.
Learning Resources
We develop disciplinary fluency in our program of study and we celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of design critical to address the plurality and complexity of the environments in which we operate. Learn about resources.
Our Faculty
Pratt’s distinguished faculty of outstanding creative professionals and scholars share a common desire to fully develop each student’s individual potential and creativity. The faculty come from diverse educational and professional backgrounds representing the breadth of Fashion Design’s complexity. This multiplicity of views and experiences provide for a tailored graduate education that is as unique as each of the students. See all Communications Design faculty and administrators.
Communication designers are leading thriving careers, addressing critical challenges, and creating innovative work that reimagines our world, at a diverse selection of companies and institutions. They also go on to become entrepreneurs and principals leading their own studios and businesses.
Thinking seriously about Pratt? Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
Building your portfolio can be daunting. We’ll answer your questions and help you feel confident about the portfolio you submit with your application. Start building your portfolio, now.
Find yourself at home at Pratt: our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighbors. Check us out.
The final UG COMD Lecture of the semester will feature Zipeng Zhu @zzdesign!
NOW IS WOW
April 24, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Engineering Building 307
We live in a time where timing is everything, and in design, that couldn’t be more true. Creating work that’s relevant and impactful goes beyond aesthetics—it’s about responding to the now. @dazzle.studio founder Zipeng Zhu will explore how designers can embrace an ever-changing world to create work that is bold, meaningful, and impossible to ignore. Through his signature use of color, pattern, and typography, he’ll demonstrate how staying fearless and adaptable can make your work stand out in a crowded creative landscape. Get ready for an engaging, high-energy lecture that will challenge you to think differently, take risks, and design with the present in mind—because now is now and now is wow!
See you there!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/zipeng-zhu-now-is-wow-tickets-1321675891169
Pratt and a Century of The New Yorker https://www.pratt.edu/news/pratt-and-a-century-of-the-new-yorker/
Cover by Nicole Rifkin, BFA ComD/ Illustration, '15.
Join us for our second UX/UI Talk on Monday, April 28 at 6:00 PM in Pratt Studio 401! We’ll be hosting Noah Semus, a Pratt alum and current Senior Interaction Designer at Google Labs, who will be sharing his creative journey from student to designer at Google—working on AI tools like ImageFX, MusicFX, and more.
Next up in our UG COMD Lecture Series: an eye-opening lecture with art director, designer, and writer Tim Burns!
Tim Burns is a graphic designer whose diverse career has taken him from his home state of Indiana to Los Angeles to New York City. Along the way, he juggled his design work with a decade playing in an indie rock band and earned an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA. In addition to brand design, he has worked as an art director and designer across the entertainment, publishing, and events industries, with clients including Eli Lilly, Allstate, Discovery, and A+E Networks. He is currently a senior brand designer with Quad, a marketing experience company, in their NYC office.
Designing Your Future: Passion, Resilience, and the Unexpected
Where you envision your career in ten or twenty years and where it actually takes you can be vastly different—or surprisingly aligned. Your path is shaped not only by your choices and the unpredictability of the industry but also by the unexpected challenges life throws in your way.
In this talk, Tim reflects on his decades-long career, as well as the trajectories of his former classmates, to examine how real-life careers evolve. He’ll highlight pivotal moments that shaped their journeys, sharing both smart decisions and missteps from his own experience—to help you navigate yours with confidence.
Above all, Tim believes that passion and hard work can be as valuable as innate talent and that embracing what drives you—whether in your career or personal projects—can define your success. Through work samples spanning his career, he’ll illustrate his DIY spirit, his relentless pursuit of improvement, and the creative energy that continues to fuel his work today.
Join us on April 14, 2025 at 6:00 PM in Steuben 417!
UG COMD Lecture Series: An Evening with Harshal Duddalwar
Harshal Duddalwar (@harshalduddalwar) is a designer and art director from India based in New York City. He’s currently a senior designer at 2x4 and has previously worked at The New York Times, Pentagram, and Microsoft, alongside other studios, and has collaborated with brands, creatives, and startups, primarily focusing on branding, editorial, systems, and product design. He holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and has taught, lectured, and critiqued at schools in the US and India. At RISD, Harshal’s focus shifted from a commercial practice to a conceptual one, nudging him to make a body of personal work. While he continues to engage in client projects, he is also co-developing a studio practice that explores ways to integrate the person and the personal.
In this talk, Harshal will share how he’s finding a balance between his professional and personal projects, how they both shape each other, and how the latter has helped him slow down and make sense of the world. He will talk about how instincts, intuition, and “a gut feeling” play a big role in making design decisions and his efforts to create work that feels authentic and intentional at a time when things are headed toward predictability and standardization. Harshal will also share his efforts and struggles in finding and making his space in the industry and the city he finds expansive and overwhelming, the many other skills one needs beyond a good portfolio, and how there’s no finish line.
Join us on March 31, 2025 at 6 PM in Steuben Hall 417!
The UG COMD Lecture Series began a few semesters ago, to provide undergraduate students with opportunities to learn from and be inspired by professionals in the industry. Lectures are followed by a Q&A session. Afterward, a reception with refreshments and music will be held in honor of the speaker.
Join us in the coming weeks as we speak to @harshalduddalwar, Tim Burns, and @zzdesign!
https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/undergraduate-comd-lecture-series-spring-2025-4155943
UX/UI Talk: An Evening with Mauricio Melo Gonzalez | hosted by Alvaro Uribe, Adjunct Professor, CCE
Monday, March 31 at 5:00 PM
PS 401
Join us for our first-ever UX/UI Talk with Mauricio Melo Gonzalez, an interactive designer from Bogotá, Colombia, with over 20 years of experience in graphic
design and digital product design.
Mauricio's impressive career includes teaching UX/UI design globally at BrainStation, as well as serving as an adjunct professor at various institutions, including the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá and Westchester Community College in NY.
Don't miss out! Join us on March 31 at 5:00 PM!
"Empathy Towards the Natural World" exhibition curated by Beata Belogolovsky
This multidisciplinary exhibition aims to bring together individuals at Pratt who are inspired by or committed to the idea of living in a more ecocentric world. Join participants in viewing each other's work and engaging in impactful discussions. Snacks will be provided!
Monday, March 10th, 7:30-9:00pm in Pratt Studios 310
Please email BeataBelogolovsky@gmail.com for more information!
The Communications Design curriculum embraces the multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature of communication design practice. Our courses and projects promote the rich exchange embodied in a studio culture that values the development of individual perspectives, critique, visual literacy, media fluency, experiential learning, and innovative formal outcomes.
Second-year coursework introduces fundamental theories, methodologies, and skills central to communication design. Courses prompt students to define and explore a design process that engages research, historical and contemporary contexts, experimentation, audience, technology, and play in the construction of meaningful visual forms.
Upper-level studio courses prompt students to engage in increasingly complex projects that introduce time-based media, visual systems, branding, and installations. Beginning in the third year, students develop an individual focus or set of interests inside the larger discipline through courses in their chosen area of emphasis: graphic design or illustration. Electives both inside the department and throughout the Institute expand the core curriculum, allowing students to explore ways of thinking and making throughout the visual arts.
Emphasis in Illustration
Students who select the Illustration Emphasis take a series of upper-level studio courses that explore topics particularly relevant to image-based communication, such as advanced storytelling, socio-political commentary, and authorship. Upper-level courses related to the illustration emphasis encourage experimentation with multiple technologies, platforms, and techniques. Electives provide opportunities to explore a wide spectrum of contemporary illustration practice, including graphic novels, animation and 3D modeling, independent publishing, production design and character design
In the Communications Design BFA program students will undertake a course of study where they will work towards:
Developing a professional, responsive and interdisciplinary perspective on the role of design and the designer and their relationship to economic, social, ecological, historical and political systems
Engaging with form, systems, experiences and interactions as intersecting modes of knowing, thinking, making and being, and the implications on people, communities and environments across scale
Situating making practices, research and theory in response to the legacies of design history and to global, local and personal narratives
Demonstrating fluency in challenging the use of tools, technologies and materials across media in consideration to the value systems they embody
Practicing exploration and experimentation of the interplay between thinking and making towards developing a diverse body of work
