Visual Arts & Design

The Communication Design program is part of the Design Department in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. Our program produces effective conceptual thinkers and creative problem solvers in graphic design and user experience design/human-centered design. Students who complete the graphic design track in Communication Design will gain the ability to generate original, creative messages and ideas as well as have a professional portfolio to submit to potential employers. Students who complete the user experience design/human-centered design track will be well-prepared to embark on creative careers that allow them to create, implement and sustain effective and valuable products, services and systems.

Our B.F.A. in Communication Design seeks as its primary objective to help students learn to be effective conceptual thinkers and, most importantly, creative problem solvers in the disciplines of graphic design and user experience design/human-centered design. In the graphic design coursework, students begin by learning to utilize the basic principles of design and design thinking, and progress to learn image making, color theory and typography as they create a wide variety of visual communications. In the user experience design/human-centered design coursework, students will learn how to account for the wants and needs of potential users and audiences as they design new ways to make a broad range of technologies easier for people to use. (It’s important to understand that user experience designers do more than merely design and implement digital interfaces…)

Master’s Level Coursework in Interaction Design (IxD)

The MA with a concentration in Interaction Design operates a graduate curriculum designed to meet the needs of three types of students:

1. Those from outside UNT who possess Bachelor’s degrees who wish to build knowledge for themselves in the rapidly expanding human-centered design and user experience design arenas;
2. Those who wish to enroll in it as full-time M.A. candidates and earn this 30-credit-hour, 15-and-a-half-month duration degree;
3. Those who are already enrolled in other graduate programs at UNT who wish to take between one and three courses in it to augment their learning experiences.

This program is taught at UNT’s New College in Frisco in the evenings. Students can enroll in this coursework to learn how to work on the kinds of collaborative, inter-disciplinary product and systems development teams who are endeavoring to create or re-design technology to make it useful, usable and desirable, and to ensure that it creates value.

The communication design area is housed in the Art Building, which include studio classrooms, a dedicated computer lab/classroom, a general access computer lab, and faculty offices. Additionally, the communication design area maintains valuable resources consisting of over 1,000 reference books, magazines and paper/print samples of photography, illustration, typography, graphic design and advertising for its majors.

For information about how to apply for admission into a single course in the M.A. in IXD program, or for admission as a full-time M.A. student, please visit the UNT Catalog.