What if AI could take us somewhere unexpected, rather than simply get us to an answer faster? This studio course explores how working with generative AI can lead to new ideas, unexpected outcomes, and new forms of expression in graphic design and image-making. Using existing AI platforms and processes, students will develop their own tools to generate visual forms which they will then transform into graphic design projects, including publications, interactive experiences, motion, identity systems, and more. Building on design skills and ways of thinking they are developing throughout their studies, students will learn to incorporate AI into their workflows to expand their creative practice. They will consider how AI can become part of an open-ended creative process, where curiosity, experimentation, and personal choices shape the direction of the work. Students will be encouraged to find new ways of working in this emerging landscape while shaping their own visual language and point of view. Through hands-on studio work, guest lectures, and discussions, the course will examine questions about who makes the work, how creative choices are made, and the role of AI in the design process. Students may be required to purchase subscriptions to browser-based software platforms for the semester.

While considering maps as narratives shaped by the creator’s intention and broader societal factors, this class will explore how maps organize information, communicate perspectives, and influence our understanding of the world. Drawing from current cartographic practice and ideas in Blind Maps and Blue Dots, we will examine how new technologies are changing what maps are and who produces them. More than representations of geography, maps are designed systems for organizing information, telling stories, navigating environments, and shaping how we understand the world. This course approaches cartography as a contemporary communication design practice, exploring the visual, conceptual, and interactive principles behind mapmaking. Students will investigate typography, semiotics, color theory, hierarchy, abstraction, data, and composition through in-class workshops and readings. They will consider how decisions about what to include, emphasize, or leave out reflect individual intentions as well as cultural, social, and political contexts. The course culminates in a self-directed mapping project developed iteratively throughout the semester. Students will use participatory mapping, observation, research, data collection, and visual experimentation to investigate a subject of personal interest and develop their own approach to representing it. Beginning with prototypes, students will continually refine their projects through in-class critiques and user feedback exercises. At the end of the semester, students will present a rich and compelling map or mapping experience.

Contemporary design relies on software platforms (think Photoshop or Figma) widely regarded as essential tools for professional creative work. Since the desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s, these tools have shaped how designers create visual form. Generative AI now offers an opportunity for designers to break free of proprietary platforms and build custom software tools unique to their own aesthetic sensibilities. With an emphasis on learning through making, students will experiment with using AI to build personal form-making tools (no coding experience required) that express their own creative point of view. They will then use these tools to generate visual output that will be curated into a class publication.

As generative AI shortens the distance between an idea and a polished, coded outcome, what does it mean to develop a distinct artistic point of view? In this advanced Currents studio, you will build on foundations in front-end code, interface, systems, and prototyping to focus on design judgment: how ideas are formed, references are used, defaults are recognized, and decisions are made about what should or should not be delegated to a model. Through a series of conceptual and experimental projects, you will work with emerging applications of AI across image and UI generation, conversational interfaces, code, research, synthetic personas, and other evolving forms of design practice. Rather than treating AI simply as a faster path to production, we will approach it as a material to test, question, misuse, and complicate. Throughout the semester, we will ask where creative authorship lives when parts of the design process are automated, and how taste, specificity, criticality, restraint, and risk shape work that still feels distinctly your own. Alongside individual projects, the class will build a shared research archive documenting patterns, productive uses, and failure modes of AI-assisted design.

These courses are special topical electives, often taught in new or experimental subjects, and rotate frequently.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, each explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists and working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics of the individual workshops will be posted as they become available. Past workshop topics include a survey of visual culture of 2010s, voice commands and interfaces, generative identity systems, speculative platforms, typography in and out of buildings, and what makes a bad design. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.