Design Research, Writing & Criticism
136 W 21 St, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011
USA
“Designers that rise to the top can write, articulate, weave a narrative, and communicate ideas in a compelling way.”
–Khoi Vinh, Principal Designer, Adobe
Considering pursuing graduate study in design research? Interested in the contexts and consequences of design? Passionate about storytelling in multiple media? The SVA MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism is now accepting applications for fall 2018.
Priority deadline for online application and supporting materials is January 16, 2018. All successful candidates will be granted significant scholarships. Please contact us for details.
The rigorous one-year MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism offers a high-impact, targeted program, well suited to the circumstances of established professionals, in addition to graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level. With a two-semester timeframe, the SVA MA in Design Research provides intensive instruction in the tools and techniques for researching, analyzing, and interpreting design, and its cultural and environmental implications.
The SVA MA in Design Research features an unparalleled core faculty, comprised of celebrated editors, writers, and designers such as: The New York Times culture reporter Robin Pogrebin; author and graphic designer Steven Heller; Content Matters principal Jennifer Rittner; WNYC producer Leital Molad; PIN-UP co-founder Pierre Alexandre de Looz; writer and filmmaker Adam Harrison Levy; The Incidental Steward author Akiko Busch; and urban design critic Karrie Jacobs. With more than thirty guest lecturers and critics visiting the department per semester—including The New York Times senior critic Michael Kimmelman, New Journalism progenitor Gay Talese, 2018 Venice Architecture Biennial curator Mimi Zeiger, interaction designer Dan K. Chen, media critic Virginia Heffernan, technology ethnographer Tricia Wang, author and Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen, Google Research & Machine Intelligence design lead Rob Giampietro, urban designers Interboro Partners, MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, and British design critic Rick Poynor—the program takes particular care to connect students to inspirational mentors and help them to forge relationships with potential employers and colleagues.
The program’s curriculum charts the cutting edge of design practice and is responsive to exciting developments in the media landscape. It aims to generate provocative new thinking about design and to help shape the ways in which design is engendered, presented, and evaluated. In providing the tools for constructing compelling narratives about design through writing and other media, such as podcasting and video, the program amply prepares students for future-facing careers in research, publishing, education, museums, institutes, design practice, and entrepreneurship, or for continued studies in a design-related subject.
Alumni of the program have gone on to work at companies and institutions such as Metropolis, The Museum of Modern Art, Google, Phaidon, Vitra Design Museum, Cooper Hewitt, Rizzoli, RISD, Institute of Play, Museum of Modern Art, Ideo, The Glass House, Rutgers University, Project Projects, Ziba, Surface Magazine, and Storefront for Art and Architecture.
At the SVA Department of Design Research we study design in all its manifestations, with a pronounced interest in its contexts and consequences. We don’t just focus on designed products or buildings, but also on the infrastructure that connects them, and the policy that shapes them. We try to look at what happens after a designed product is launched. We go beyond the glossy images supplied by the manufacturer to discover how things actually get used and discarded, and how they impinge upon our daily reality.
