design
Art and Art History

Special Programs & Activities in Design

Schedule of Activities in the Department of Art and Art History

Lecture Series: Design
Nationally and internationally known designers and critics visit the department every fall and spring semester to lecture, meet with graduate students for seminars and critiques, and run workshops with undergraduate students. Lectures are free and open to the public.

AIGA: American Institute of Graphic Arts – Austin Chapter
A student-run organization focused on investigating the career and educational opportunities of its members. Events are planned to engage the campus and Austin communities through client-based projects. Membership is open to any UT Austin student.

Design as Cultural Production
The Design Division has partnered with Professor Matthew Campbell in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering to create Design as Cultural Production, a cross-disciplinary course and program, which links the roles of engineers, graphic designers, and industrial designers. The Design as Cultural Production Program anticipates developing relationships with faculty across campus who can aid in addressing a broad range of subjects related to the development of a product, such as: cultural anthropology, rhetoric, psychology, ethics business, law, linguistics, marketing and advertising.

Design Student Association
A student run organization for directing design education and academic-based community interaction via interdisciplinary interaction and networking. This group plans guest speakers, special trips, project portals, and group meetings to support their interests within design and communication.

Learning Tuscany: Art and Culture in Italy
The Learning Tuscany program exposes deserving students to art and culture first-hand. Students are given the opportunity to be ambassadors from Texas, the United States and UT Austin, sharing their experiences with students and citizens of Italy. The program focuses on the landscapes of Tuscany in order to consider what defines particular places and the ways we represent them.

The Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection
An active student study collection, the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection is a comprehensive accumulation of wood type manufactured and used for printing in America during the nineteenth century. This collection was amassed by Kelly, a noted design educator and historian, as the center piece of his seminal text American Wood Type, 1828–1900: Notes on the Evolution of Decorated and Large Types and Comments on Related Trades of the Period (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1969.) This type represents a fundamental part of American heritage, the building blocks that were used to define American visual culture during the 19th century.