Design

Design can make the world better. Whether it's as a graphic designer, game designer, user experience designer, illustrator, or animator, your work can make the complex understandable. Your work can create beauty, delve into ugliness, inspire people, calm, or confront them. You can create worlds, or help us all live in this one.

BFA in Design

What Will You Learn
as A Design Major at Cornish?

You’ll take core courses in design fundamentals. By the end of your first year, you’ll choose a degree program in design, game art, illustration, animation, or interaction design.

Depending on your degree path, you will learn in a project-based curriculum. Students will create brand identities, publications, logos, and 2D & 3D art for games, build worlds, construct user interfaces, develop apps and websites, and work in emerging media such as virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR).

You will develop skills in drawing, typography, packaging/product design, bookbinding, letterpress, and printmaking. You may also choose to minor in game art or experience design.

Cornish Design Blog Posts

Learn more from our faculty about Cornish Design and the community of designers and makers in our department (and beyond).

BFA Showcase

SYNTHESIS: 2025 Design BFA Exhibition

Alumni

Alumni Stories: Mandy Blouin - The Power in Trying New Things

Alumni

Jared Pechaček, Design Alum ('10), Wins 2024 Crawford Award

Alumni

Design Alum, Meital Smith, Releases New Graphic Novel

Press releases

Cornish College of the Arts Announces Folklore, an Exhibit by Alumnus Víctor Meléndez in partnership with the MEXAM NW

Lenora St. Blog

Finding Your Artistic Path Through Drawing

Lenora St. Bloog

Through Cornish’s Design program, I learned the importance of understanding design systems to strengthen my overall designs and projects.Kai Vano-Penaloza (DE '19)

Explore Your Major

BFA in Design

BFA in Illustration

BFA in Interaction Design

Virtual / Augmented Reality

Industry Partnerships

Social Engagement

Through the support I had (and continue to have) from my professors, and the community created from my studio mates, I feel confident about starting to take my next steps into the design world.Meital Smith (DE ’21)

Student Work

Design Department

At Cornish, I learned not to be afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone.Elliot Mangels (DE ‘19)

U.N. Animation Project by Thalia Matthews

“Cities Are Good” by Danae Burmuzio

My best experiences came directly from my professors, who were so skilled in their specific field they took on almost archetypal roles; there always seemed to be an expert around the corner, whether it be a printmaker, illustrator, or design historian.Kevin Bui (DE ‘18)

Art | Design