MFADesign
Overview
Conceptual and formal inventiveness
View of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Our program is located in the Bay Area, one of the global hubs for design innovation and home to renowned cultural institutions, such as the de Young Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. You’ll be immersed in an inspiring environment that values cross-disciplinary research and collaboration.
Degree options
Our program offers two degree options based on your level of expertise:
Two-year: Appropriate if you already have experience in one or multiple design fields.
Three-year: Recommended if you have an undergraduate degree in an unrelated field. You’ll spend your first year building foundational skills to help you hit the ground running in your second year.
Both degree options provide students with the opportunity to explore different concentration areas in one of several fields of design.
Studios & Shops
Explore all horizons
Today’s designers need to move nimbly across ideas, disciplines, and skills. Your studio courses, which form the backbone of your CCA experience, are typically co-taught to encourage hybrid design structures. Your work will be driven by emerging technologies, the implications of technology-embedded products, material exploration, social media culture, and so much more. With access to state-of-the-art facilities for graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design, you’ll work across these in-demand fields to prepare for a range of leadership roles in civic, commercial, and curatorial spheres.
Digital craft and prototyping facilities
You’ll have 24/7 access to a range of facilities, including the Hybrid Lab for advanced digital fabrication and the Rapid Prototyping Studios, outfitted with CNC laser cutters, CNC routers, 3D printers, and more. With faculty guidance, you’ll explore current trends and topics in studios, drawing from your knowledge of design history, contemporary criticism, and diverse methodologies. From creating user flows and interactive wireframes to designing wearable technology, you’ll have the intellectual and physical resources you need to do it all.
Hands-on experiences drive design at CCA
- Yearly retreat at Headlands Center for the Arts
- 24/7 access to prototyping and makers’ spaces
- Exhibitions for studio and end-of-year work
- Intensive workshops with visiting designers
- Lecture series that encompasses all disciplines
- Risograph printing and book arts
- Woodworking and metalsmithing
- Extensive Materials Library
Faculty
Learn from industry leaders and visionaries
Our globally recognized faculty, including Martin Venezky, Sara Dean, and Paul Montgomery, encourage you to experiment and find applications for your research and work outside the classroom. As you prepare a portfolio of work for an end-of-year exhibition and publication project, you’ll get constant feedback from core faculty and visiting designers. Recent visitors include Extrapolation Factory, Experimental Jetset, Tim Parsons, and Future Farmers.
Jon Sueda, Chair of MFA Design
Chair Jon Sueda has practiced design everywhere from Honolulu to Holland. He’s the founder of Stripe, a design studio based in the Bay Area that specializes in printed material, identity, and exhibition work. Before joining the graduate program, he served as the director of design at CCA’s Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Additionally, Sueda has exhibited at École des Beaux-Arts, Architecture Association, Galerie de Multiples, and the New Museum. In 2017, he was elected a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale.
Faculty stories
CCA Professor Lauryn Menard on the future of greener hardware
Here’s how you can make hardware without ruining the planet. TL;DR: Weave sustainability into the product design as early as you can.
CCA faculty Steve Jones and Martin Venezky receive AIGA SF Continuum Fellow awards
AIGA, the professional association for design, focuses on design as a profession and as a cultural asset that serves practitioners across design disciplines, as well as teachers and students with national and local chapters.
The European dispatch: Summer Study Abroad offers students a taste of European design and art
In four exciting Summer Study Abroad courses, CCA students explored cities across Europe to gain a deep sense of history and connect with a global community of artists and designers.
Concentrations
A course of study that matches your experience and ambitions
Two-year degree
This two-year course of study is best for students with a background or professional experience in graphic design, industrial design, or interaction design. With a focus on prototyping, design methods, independent research, and technology innovation, students emerge from the program with an expanded skill set. Their culminating thesis project often serves to reinvent their design practices and jumpstart their careers.
Three-year degree
This three-year course of study is ideal for students who want to shift careers into a design discipline, where applicants often hold an undergraduate degree in an unrelated or peripheral field. Beginning with a foundational first year that’s focused on design process, prototyping, technology, and tools, students are able to hit the ground running when they join the rest of their cohort in year two.
View course guides
Your schedule should be based on individual requirements according to your degree audit and the recommendations of our program’s manager. The following course guides outline three paths towards graduation:
Dual degree
The MFA in Design and MBA in Design Strategy dual degree is a three-year course of study that incorporates aspects of both programs. Students explore business models, contemporary design practices, and the hybrid spaces in between. This dual-degree option is perfect for students interested in running their own businesses.
Careers
Alumni find new territories for design
Our students have many unique opportunities to connect the critical design culture they experience in our graduate program to the needs of Bay Area companies. Alumni successfully find work in the tech industry for companies including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, and IDEO. They also join product design and research and development teams, or they establish their own design firms such as Backer Kit, Sensoree, Anxy Magazine, and Gold Collective. Alumni with a focus on studio-based craft find work with organizations like Headlands Center for the Arts, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Alumni success
Keen as folk: Quality Time
Design collective Quality Time balances playful collaboration with serious ambition, taking on projects from branding the San Francisco Art Book Fair to making art, teaching, and freelancing across Apple and Heath Ceramics.
Keen as folk: GRL GRP
Five designers formed GRL GRP after graduation to sustain their community, creating collaborative work that spans wine labels, murals, workshops, and exhibitions while maintaining daily communication across the globe.
Keen as folk: But Whole Press
But Whole Press emerged from late-night studio sessions and shared passion for Risograph printing, with members creating experimental work alongside their individual practices in graphic design, computer vision, and art direction.
News and events
What’s happening in our community?
Get to know CCA alum Brooke Hopper, Principal Designer, AI/ML at Adobe
Graduating from CCA with an MFA in Design in 2015, Brooke Hopper is now a principal designer, speaker, and champion for artists.
CCA student promotes environmental justice with a bio-tool that detects water contamination
MFA Design student Melissa Ortiz developed Colores del Rio, a bio-tool made of red cabbage waste that gauges water quality, in her Biodesign class at CCA.
CCA course sponsored by Google focuses on the future
Discover how students from across CCA’s Design programs speculated on the future in the industry-sponsored course Studio Forward.
