Art, Design, and Architecture News

With move-in complete for most students and campus activities well underway, students, faculty, and staff are now anticipating the start of fall semester classes, which begin this Wednesday, Aug. 19.

WHAM-TV features Julianna Truesdale '11 (graphic design).

The College of Art and Design offered three courses as part of RIT's First Class Academy, a tuition-free, credit-bearing online experience that introduced incoming freshmen to the RIT and Rochester communities this summer.

COVID-19 has challenged the university to consider an even more creative academic portfolio with blended, online, split A/B, and flex class options. To prepare for in-person instruction, RIT has upgraded academic buildings and classrooms. And physical distancing and face coverings, required of faculty and students in classrooms, together provide some of the greatest protection against the spread of COVID-19.

The unexpected transition to remote learning during the spring semester challenged faculty across RIT to experiment, create, and deploy new methods of instruction to ensure student success. As the university gears up for in-person and online classes—or a combination of both—faculty members are applying a wide range of lessons learned from the spring to keep academic momentum moving forward in the fall.

Seventeen interdisciplinary teams of students presented their innovative designs developed this summer in the Studio 930 design consultancy.

Thirty-five high school students built and refined their portfolios for college applications during a two-week visual arts course taught by RIT School of Art faculty.

Whatever the hot topic is in politics, technology, entertainment and more, chances are Doug Chayka '96 (Illustration) has created art on the subject for a big client.

Josh Owen, an internationally renowned designer, author and faculty-researcher who has led RIT’s industrial design program to national prominence since coming to the university a decade ago, has been named the new director of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies and the Massimo and Lella Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design.

RIT students this fall can have a creative outlet to help them reflect on their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic by producing comics and visual arts narratives. Kriota Willberg, a New York City-based comic artist and illustrator, will be teaching a weekly online workshop called “Graphic Medicine,” being offered by the School of Individualized Study and the Center for Engaged Storycraft in the College of Liberal Arts.

FOX Rochester talks to Kurtis Kracke ’15 (industrial design), co-founder of ThermApparel, which created a cooling vest to help those who are sensitive to the heat.

Two visionaries in the fields of advertising, marketing and communications have been named co-recipients of the 2020 Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award, presented by RIT’s Saunders College of Business. Sue Butler and Tracy Till are the first joint female recipients in the award’s 35-year history.