Why CCS?
We have a vision. The CCS MFA is created to meet the needs and nurture the opportunities of practicing designers. It builds upon CCS’ strong tradition of educating highly skilled designers and adds a new dimension: CCS focuses on educating design professionals who can create and make at a very high level—and can also operate nimbly within the world of commerce. We are committed to helping designers gain the specific knowledge and skills and the broad cultural literacy that will enable them to innovate, strategize and collaborate in a changing economic and creative environment. Global in outlook, the program will reach out to a rich international mix of students from many countries and cultures with experience in a wide range of industries. Our goal is to prepare a new generation of designers with the skills and outlook required for inspired leadership in design and business.
The MFA program’s focus on business is directly related to CCS roots. Founded as part of the Arts and Crafts movement a century ago, CCS has always been practical, professional and business oriented. We believe that designers today who want to make a difference in a complex, changing global business environment must think in terms of broad systems solutions. And to do that they have to understand the dynamics of commerce.
Students will experience the basic “Boot Camp” immersion required of MBA’s as well as courses in marketing, within an environment steeped in business culture. The objective is to give students the tools and vocabulary necessary to think in business terms and to communicate effectively in the business world: verbally, in writing and through quantitative thinking. Learning will be applied and tested on team-based, client-sponsored projects in studio classes.
General Information
The College for Creative Studies is a recognized leader in art and design education that prepares students to enter the new global economy where creativity shapes better communities and societies. A private, fully accredited college located in Detroit’s Cultural Center, CCS has the world’s most recognized program in transportation design and is credited with placing more graduates in automotive design than any other college. The College for Creative Studies provides a dynamic learning environment for exploring broad issues in art and design and the various contexts in which they emerge, as part of its rigorous preparation of students for careers in the professional world.
2008 is the inaugural year for CCS graduate programs. The two year MFA degrees in design and transportation design are terminal degrees that prepare students for leadership in the design industries. The MFA degree programs share core curricula, with variations in technology components, and the focus and content of industry sponsored
projects.
The CCS graduate program is directed and taught by professionals with extensive experience in design and the business of design. Our approach starts with designers: talented, trained, experienced professionals interested in deepening their theoretical and practical design knowledge and competence, and learning the business of design at a management level. Our goals are to give our graduates knowledge and skills to advance their careers as innovators in the field of design, shorten the time frame typically required to learn business practices on the job, build and lead creative teams that drive business results, and become active participants in corporate strategy and decision making.
CCS MFA graduates will emerge with the knowledge, vocabulary and skills required for integrating design into the corporate planning stream that connects market research, engineering, finance, production and marketing. They will be prepared to move into leadership positions in the businesses in which they work.
Turning concepts into reality is what designers do and our intent is to educate designers who can exercise leadership while keeping their hands in the process. Designers who are adept at analyzing and strategizing—and also at creating and making.
At CCS we understand design as a discipline for creating ideas and solutions that make people’s lives better and more interesting; and as a way of thinking that enables experiences, facilitates expression and mediates interaction between people and their world. MFA core study areas are design, business and culture, structured in a systems approach designed to relate and integrate learning across disciplines. While other programs tend to focus on the analysis of research and the verbalization of criteria and concepts, the CCS MFA focuses on doing. The designer as Maker is at the heart and soul of this institution. Students will learn to take research findings, new knowledge about the human/technology interface, basic business principles, and an understanding of social, economic and cultural contexts, and transform them into applicable results.