Tony Favarula
Visual Communication Design
Visual Communication Design Department
The Department of Visual Communication Design encourages students to actively engage their world and define their role as contributing designers by developing their critical and analytical skills, personal voice, and visual language. The department cultivates a sense of social responsibility and inquiry in student designers who will be working at the intersection of art, design, and culture.
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Explore our campus by taking a student-led in-person or virtual tour.
Tony Favarula
Our Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni
A large faculty of recognized practicing designers, writers, and theorists teach a broad offering of courses in design principles, issues, theory, methodologies, processes, technology, and practice. Students develop their role as designers, authors, critics, and citizens, expanding their conceptual, critical, and organizational abilities in the process. Our extensive technical, advising, and administrative staff further the creation and assessment of each student’s unique body of work.
Our students are consistently represented in national design competitions and publications, while our alumni are designing, exhibiting, and teaching at leading studios and institutions across the country and beyond.
Tony Favarula
Our Course Offerings
Visual Communication Design’s carefully constructed curricular pathway provides a solid foundation while fulfilling a wide variety of interests that embody design today. VCD courses are rooted in familiar design areas (typography, graphic design, UI/UX, data visualization), but every course migrates outward by introducing unexpected frameworks, methodologies, constraints, and critical parameters.
Emerging from VCD’s foundations, students submit work for a sophomore VCD Portfolio Review, and then launch into intermediate VCD courses followed by a variety of upper-level electives within the department. Students are then encouraged to adopt a radical approach to learning, moving beyond traditional formulas to pursue individual pathways including courses from across the School.
Tony Favarula
Our Lecture Series
Each year, the Visual Communication Design department hosts a lecture series featuring leading designers and design educators from across the country and abroad.
Our 2024–2025 guest speakers included Jacek Mrowczyk, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Adam Nocek, David Skopec, and Matthew Terdich.
Tony Favarula
Letterpress Studio
Letterpress provides a lens for our Visual Communication Design students to simultaneously understand the history of typography and printed matter through movable type and hand-operated printing presses while fostering departures for contemporary design practice through bookworks, page layout, and poster design.
Our fully equipped letterpress shop invites students to take beginning and advanced-level classes in a studio with 300+ typefaces, five Vandercook cylinder proof presses, two C&P presses, and a Sigwalt.
Tony Favarula
Sophomore Portfolio Review
Undergraduate students must pass a Visual Communication Design department portfolio review in order to enroll in intermediate courses within the department. Portfolios are reviewed by a committee of full and part-time VCD faculty. Reviews are conducted prior to advance registration every fall, spring, and summer semester. The following Visual Communication Design courses are required in order to submit a portfolio for review.
•VCD 1001 Introduction to Visual Communication
•VCD 1002 Illustration Technologies Lab
•VCD 2011 Beginning Typography
•VCD 2012 Type Technologies Lab
•VCD 2001 Beginning Graphic Design
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Contact Us
Visual Communication Design Department
Sharp Building
37 S. Wabash Ave., suite 1101
Phone: 312.899.5190
Chair
Piotr Michura pmichura@saic.edu
Graduate Coordinator
Alex Kostiw akostiw@saic.edu
Undergraduate Coordinator
Mark Addison Smith msmith7@saic.edu
Senior Administrative Director
Aaron Kissman akissm@saic.edu
Administrative Director
Jennie Bukowski jbukow@saic.edu
Administrative Assistant
Isra Pate ipate@saic.edu