Refine your illustration and design practice in a program with craft and innovation at its core. Create in our state-of-the-art facilities and our studios steeped in a deep history of making, all in the cultural heart of NYC.
Communications Design: An Alignment of Thinking and Making
Explore how to become a visual storyteller—using words, images, and other forms of expression. In our program, you’ll build a diverse body of work as you:
become confident using typography, photography, illustration, and/or animation to construct narratives and convey complex information in compelling ways;
identify communication challenges and develop strategic solutions to address them; and
create content that resonates with specific audiences, using your talents to connect with clarity and authenticity.
Emphasis in Illustration: A Unique Program
The illustration emphasis is unique—it prepares you for a career in illustration, design, or one that combines both. You will not find another program like it in New York.
Under the watchful care of distinguished working illustrators, you’ll explore and develop your visual voice as well as different ways to express it—such as authorship, world-building, narrative storytelling, editorial commentary, and advertising. Courses encourage experimentation with multiple technologies, platforms, and techniques. Electives provide opportunities to explore a wide spectrum of contemporary illustration practices, including graphic novels, animation and 3-D modeling, independent publishing, production design, and character design.
Enjoy the Full College Experience on Our Brooklyn Campus
Pratt’s campus is a green oasis in Brooklyn. Minutes from theaters, museums, concert venues, and much more, the 25-acre campus is a leafy refuge in a prime location. A creative, transportive environment, Pratt’s campus is the ideal place to unleash your imagination.
Join a close-knit community passionate about art and design. There is a strong maker mentality among our students, who have launched independent film festivals, zines, a plethora of clubs, and everything in between. Collaborative and entrepreneurial, this community offers many outlets for your creativity.
State-of-the-Art Facilities
Pratt’s generously sized studios, maker spaces, and labs offer top-of-the-line equipment and tools. Here you will exchange ideas, deepen your skills, and create alongside your peers. Hands-on and immersive, any Communications Design student may use our many production labs to discover, iterate, and refine their investigations across different media.
Our Faculty
Our faculty of outstanding creative educators share a common goal to develop each student’s potential. Pratt students benefit from working with both professional designers who teach alongside their work at top design positions in the city and professional design educators. See all Communications Design faculty and administrators.
“My Illustration Intensive class prepared me the most for my career. Projects often tested me conceptually and technically, thanks to professors who were in the industry. They gave me some incredible insight as to what it would be like working with art directors.”
Sebastian Torrens, BFA Communications Design (Illustration) ’23 Read More
Communication Design alumni are leading thriving careers, addressing critical challenges, and creating innovative work at a variety of companies and institutions. Many also become entrepreneurs and principals, leading their own studios and businesses.
Where They Work
Amazon
Hasbro
Pegasus Books
Scholastic
Penguin Random House
Cricket Media
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.
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
Ready for More?
HERE’S HOW TO APPLY
PORTFOLIO HELP
OUR CAMPUS & BEYOND
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.
Hello ComD Students -- we are trying a new time for Chairapy to see if it works better for you. Come chat with Meta in Pratt Studios 310 every Thursday (except Thanksgiving, duh) from 3-4pm.
Join us for the first event in the Fall 2025 UG COMD Lecture Series: an evening with JUN CEN!
WHEN: October 30, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Where: ARC E-02 Lecture Hall
@juncenart is a New York-based illustrator and animated short film director originally from China. He is a gold medalist in the Society of Illustrators Annual Awards, and his work has been consistently recognized by The New York Times as some of the most memorable illustrations of the year. Cen's clients include, but are certainly not limited to, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Bally, Burberry and Rimowa.
RSVP (with your Pratt email!): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ug-comd-lecture-series-jun-cen-tickets-1866848095909
Join us TOMORROW, October 24th from 6-8 PM at the Opening Reception of
BEYOND WORDS: Visual Language of the Pratt Illustration Department
The Rubelle & Norman Schafler Gallery Chemistry Building, 1st Floor
On display from October 24 – December 13
"Beyond Words seeks not only to highlight the achievements of the Illustration faculty at Pratt but to create a collective narrative of their brilliant works within the framework of a single gallery, while also giving each their own moment." - @kelemccomseystudio, Curator
Hope you made it to BOBA FÊTE today! 🧋
Thank you to everyone who dropped by Pratt Studios for a delicious cup of fresh boba tea and joined in our creative cup decorating competition.
Congrats to our winners: Kyra Walsh (Most Disruptive), Mason Freeman (Craftastic), Jordan Baker (Best Aesthetics), Yee Coughlin (Best Idea), and Jaya Jerome (Best Use of Materials). Watch your inboxes for info on how to collect your prizes!
HELLO ComD Students and Faculty -- head over to Pratt Studios 3rd Floor to our Boba Fête Boba Tea Bar -- where you can pick your own drink base and add in the boba pearls with the flavors that appeal to you the most. We will also have cups and supplies to decorate cups for a chance to win poster prizes. See you TODAY, Monday, Oct. 20th from 1:30-3pm.
BEYOND WORDS: Visual Language of the Pratt Illustration Department
Curated by Kele McComsey
The Rubelle & Norman Schafler Gallery Chemistry Building, 1st Floor Hours: Monday–Saturday, 10am–5pm
October 24–December 13, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, October 24, 2025, 6–8pm
Richard Borge, Megan Cash, David Cooper, Lynne Foster, Cheryl Gross, Rudy Gutierrez, Margaret Hurst,Thomas La Padula, Veronica Lawlor, Scott Menchin, Tim O'Brien, Yuxin Pei, TLaloC
"Images and words are seemingly inseparable. Just as our five senses appear indivisible from our waking narrative, so does our need to communicate those experiences in images and words, whether it be world events, personal stories, politics, memories, or myth–to name just a few.
However, before any words are read or spoken, it is the image that holds the initial power to inform, misinform, direct, or misdirect our perceptions. A well-crafted visual representation holds so much intellectual currency, even in a world oversaturated with imagery.
Illustration is often regarded as an art practice that is solely employed to obtain a specific result or to clarify that which cannot easily be explained. Although valid, the distillation of the process to technique and mission diminishes the magic that good illustrators perform: the sublimation of information into a strictly visual format.
Beyond Words seeks not only to highlight the achievements of the Illustration faculty at Pratt but to create a collective narrative of their brilliant works within the framework of a single gallery, while also giving each their own moment. Although many of these pieces were once created for specific commercial projects, they now take on a new meaning within this context. Shown in conversation with other genres of fine art, these illustrations reveal their equivalent capacity as a form of storytelling that is beyond words."
- Kele McComsey, Curator
A huge congratulations to the 2025 Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame inductees, including Pratt COMD's own Rudy Gutierrez, Tim O'Brien, and Kadir Nelson! Alongside fellow inductees Peter Arno, Frank R. Paul, and Marie Severin, we celebrated these wonderful artists' contributions to illustration history. Congratulations!!
With a night full of music, friends, motivating speeches, and laughter, it was an evening to remember!
#societyofillustators #illustration #illustrationartists #nyc
Hello COMD Students --
Today, October 20th and all this week -- take a puzzle break!
We have a "Life Before Social Media" puzzle set up on a table for you to enjoy.
Where? Pratt Studios 310
When? Monday, Oct. 20
(until puzzle is done)
Why? See below
Working on puzzles has many cognitive and emotional benefits! Puzzles can stimulate brain plasticity -- helping you create new neural connections. They can also provide a sense of accomplishment and boost your mood.
You can read more about the benefits of puzzles here:
https://maddcappgames.com/blogs/news/usa-today-on-the-benefits-of-puzzles-for-adults
