Discover your creative potential with the Design & Illustration programs at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Whether you’re passionate about design, digital storytelling, or shaping cutting-edge user experiences, our majors and minors offer you the tools and knowledge to turn your passion into a career. You’ll learn how to create meaningful user experiences, solve complex problems through visual communication, and employ your creativity to inspire change and address cultural and social issues.
Our department offers a range of majors and minors:
- The BFA in Graphic and Interactive Design teaches you the fundamentals of design while bringing in exciting new technologies. Whether it's branding, typography, motion design, augmented reality (AR) or artificial intelligence (AI), this program will prepare you for an exciting career in both print and digital media.
- The MFA in Graphic and Interactive Design is for students ready to dive deep into advanced design research and practice. You’ll develop your personal style and tackle complex design projects, all while preparing to become a leader in the future of design.
- The BFA in Illustration and Emerging Media combines traditional drawing skills with digital storytelling. You’ll learn to create powerful visual stories for all kinds of platforms, from books to interactive media, preparing you for a career in visual storytelling across industries.
- The BFA in User Experience and User Interface (UX/UI) Design merges creative design with an understanding of how people interact with technology. You’ll work with the tools to create intuitive, user-centered digital interactions that deliver seamless experiences across devices and platforms. Launching Fall 2025
- We also offer Minors in Graphic and Interactive Design, Illustration and Emerging Media, and User Experience and User Interface Design. These are perfect if you want to add creative skills to your main area of study. For those pursuing art, these minors are a great way to expand your technical and creative toolkit, helping you explore new areas of design while building a diverse portfolio for your future.
Design and Illustration students are mentored by a passionate, award-winning faculty, who experiment and create original, human-centered and research-driven concepts across all areas of visual design and illustration. These areas include branding, typography, packaging, digital media, publishing, entrepreneurship, product design, virtual reality, and experiential design.
All students engage with core software applications (Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop), as well as a wide variety of software for illustration, prototyping, animation, motion graphics, typeface design, 3D modeling, coding, website design, augmented reality, and game development.
Students also discover and refine their unique voices, with plenty of opportunities to use their skills to make an impact in the real world.
Philadelphia, with its thriving creative scene and one of the largest national chapters of AIGA (the professional association for design), serves as a living laboratory for design-driven solutions. Beyond the city, students have the chance to showcase their talents, connect with industry professionals, and gain recognition on both national and international stages—keeping them at the forefront of global design and illustration trends.
Students and faculty have been featured in numerous national and international design and illustration competitions and publications and have won many awards and honors. Leveraging robust faculty and alumni networks, graduates from our programs find employment in studios and agencies around the country as well as abroad in areas that include:
- Design studios
- User-experience (UX) and user-interface (UI) design firms
- Publishing companies
- Streaming platforms and network television
- Music industry and digital services
- Motion and experiential design studios
- Packaging design
- Fortune 500 technology companies
- Advertising agencies
- Illustration entrepreneurs and start-up design businesses
The following list includes just some of the companies where our students have worked: they include Anheuser-Busch, Chronicle Books, Google, Hallmark, MTV, The New York Times, Nickelodeon, Pentagram, the Philadelphia Flyers (NHL), Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Phillies (MLB), Simon and Schuster, Spotify, Urban Outfitters and Vanguard.
Design & Illustration Resources
- Access to Adobe Creative Cloud and other industry-standard software.
- Support available to experiment with emerging technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and blended reality.
- A dedicated printing and production studio; a large, open space for interdisciplinary collaborative projects; individual workstations for making (MFA); and flat files for storage (MFA)
- Access to the Tyler digital fabrication studio and additional printing facilities
- Access to the specialists, technology and resources of Temple—a leading public research university
Visiting artists and lecturers
The Design & Illustration Department brings leading designers, illustrators and thinkers to enrich the student experience, providing workshops, presentations and one-on-one interactions for students. Over the years Tyler has hosted Louise Fili, Josh Goldblum, Jessica Hische, Brad Johnson, Zach Lieberman, Cheryl Miller, Andrea Pippins, Robynne Raye, Sadie Red Wing, Stefan Sagmeister, Paula Scher, David Dylan Thomas, Roberto de Vicq, James Victore and Zipeng Zhu.
An Entrepreneurial Spirit
The most notable graphic designers and illustrators today all have one thing in common— drive. In the Design & Illustration Department, students experience creative agency and entrepreneurship by bringing their ideas to market and working directly with clients. Semester-long experiences provide opportunities for hands-on problem solving and real-world projects.
In the past, students have created their own brands and sold their own products, in addition to collaborating with companies and organizations like Boldfaced Goods, Career Wardrobe, Genuine Fred, Hallmark, Temple Law, Tyler’s Alumni Association, and Victory Brewing Company.
