The goal of undergraduate design education at the School of Design in UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) is to provide a foundation that will allow graduates to deal with diverse professional challenges appropriately and to master tools and media of the future. This foundation has three components: 1) an integrated curriculum concentrating on the design process rather than product, 2) one and one-half years of supervised experience in the design field through the professional practice (co-op) program, and 3) a structured liberal arts education. Communication design is a five-year program that includes cooperative work experience and leads to a professional bachelor of science degree in design. Students spend their first semester in foundation studies, which provide a concentrated study of basics related to color, drawing, and representing objects in space, creating an understanding of two- and three-dimensional organization. Emphasis is placed on the ingredients of process: inquiry, analysis, comparison, evaluation and a language. The foundation semester is an introduction to tools, methods and materials, including development of basic technical ability.

Career Possibilities Graphic design career opportunities include the design of advertisements, exhibitions, publications, corporate communication, packaging, posters, websites, branding systems, books, signs, magazines, environmental designs and video messages. They may be identified as communications designers, visual designers or graphic designers; and they may work in art direction and design consultation. Students may find employment with a private or public organization or a design agency. Some choose to work on a freelance basis. Students focusing on interaction or motion design are prepared to work in a variety of capacities. They are most likely to work for digital design firms to develop structural and functional information architecture for interactive and immersive environments. Students could design educational and/or game applications; develop networked communications design for the Internet; create 3-D animation, film effects and virtual reality applications, such as product walk-arounds and building fly-throughs; applications for smart phones or tablets; work independently or as members of a multidisciplinary team (which may include illustrators, designers, sound engineers, videographers, photographers, writers, film makers, management personnel, etc.).