The Communication Design Curriculum is published on the Parsons website, listing all of the requirements for getting a BFA in Communication Design at Parsons.
You might be asking, what does this all mean? How does this all fit together?
All Parsons students begin with an interdisciplinary first year experience that introduces students to making and thinking in two-dimensional media, three-dimensional media, and time-based media. Accompanying these studio classes are courses in writing, history, and sustainability.
Students begin their BFA in Communication design with a shared foundation in typography and interaction. By the end of the year, students should be able to give intentional form to language (typography), understand code, causality, and systems (interaction), and marry both to the gestalt principles of visual form.
The emphasis of this year is in building the visual and technical skills that are necessary for creation, enabling further study in the third and fourth year.
The junior year is spent applying those foundational concepts, processes, and techniques in context, with a necessary focus on cross-media translation. In Core 3 Studio, students develop concepts that translate across media with a clear relationship to content, purpose, and audience. They are also introduced to how designers work within publishing, branding, or digital product development. Collabs focus on working with non-designers (both internal and external) towards mutual goals within specific domains and contexts, while Currents are often more abstract and experimental, allowing for deeper engagement and inquiry with materials and/or culture.
In the senior year, students synthesize their learning from the last three years through interrogating and developing their own design processes. The first semester is focused on ideation and prototyping. Students begin with exercises in the first part of the fall semester to find out 1) what really matters to them out there in the world (subject matter) and 2) what they are curious about as a designer (question or idea). Students then put the these together in multiple formats and media. The second semester focuses on iteration and presentation. The year concludes with workshops and lectures about life after school. Developing agency and being able to articulate one’s own work as a designer is critical for success after graduation, not just in the first year but afterwards. At the end of each year, we publish a comprehensive catalogue both in print and online, so that student work can be more widely distributed to studios and companies.
During their time at Parsons, students should develop confidence in the follow areas: