The Department of Design offers a creative, challenging, and flexible approach to the study of design with emphasis on socially responsible, human-centered, and sustainable practice.
A computer desktop organized personally for you to find things the way you remember best: visually, spatially, temporally or textually.
A business fashion line for professional women with disabilities, revolutionarily fitted on a custom-made dress form whose legs bend to model a seated body.
A shipping container housing complex for lower-income families for San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
An exhibition design strategy that maximizes effective communication of culturally sensitive and controversial subject matter.
Cutting-edge LED lighting systems that significantly cut a business’s energy costs.
The Department of Design offers a creative, challenging, and
flexible approach to the study of design with emphasis on
socially responsible, human-centered, and sustainable practice.
A computer desktop organized personally for you to find
things the way you remember best: visually, spatially, temporally
or textually.
A business fashion line for professional women with
disabilities, revolutionarily fitted on a custom-made dress form
whose legs bend to model a seated body.
A shipping container housing complex for lower-income
families for San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
An exhibition design strategy that maximizes effective
communication of culturally sensitive and controversial subject
matter.
Cutting-edge LED lighting systems that significantly cut a
business’s energy costs.
These all have resulted from design research by UC Davis
Department of Design graduate students and faculty striving to
create thoughtful human-centered designs. Pursuing your MFA in
Design or majoring in Design as an undergraduate offers you the
chance to make a difference through design, combining your
artistic skill and training with experience in practical and
commercial applications. Under the guidance of the Design
faculty, you will learn to give the products of your imagination
a tangible shape and put your creativity to use solving
real-world problems.
The UC Davis Department of Design is the only comprehensive
academic design department in the University of California
system. We deliver a research-focused graduate (MFA) and
undergraduate (BA) curriculum that fully integrates design
history, theory and criticism with design thinking, making,
writing, visual literacy, and creative practice. Studio courses
include exhibition design, fashion, interactive design,
interior architecture, lighting, product design, textiles, and
visual communication (digital, environmental, information, print
and screen-based design). We stress strategies of
sustainability, reuse of materials, and inclusivity.
Our curriculum encourages students to work
interdisciplinarily across different areas of design in order to
solve particular problems that demand skills and techniques
across disciplines. Students will be introduced to computing
skills in all course work without sacrificing knowledge in
handcraftsmanship. The department has dedicated studios and
computer labs where projects can be constructed in a very
collaborative environment. We welcome you to explore our website
and to contact and join us, to advance design in the ways you see
it needs to grow.
Gifts to the Department of Design support outstanding academic
programs and advance the pursuit of new knowledge. Contribute via
credit card online, or donate by check (see below for
details).
Please consider making a gift as follows:
Design Department General Support
Your gift supports outstanding academic programs within the
Department of Design.
For individual faculty or staff members, advisers, or graduate
students, please see our People section. If you have a
question about the undergraduate major in Design, see the
Undergraduate
section. You can also make an advising appointment or contact a
peer adviser there.
