Color & Materials Design

The Program

The curriculum invites students to discover a culture and mindset where forward-thinking innovative color and materials practices can thrive.

Using the classifications of colors, materials and finishes students learn to create meaning between products and experiences and their user or audience. Graduates of the College’s program in Color and Materials Design work in both the physical and digital spaces to advance ideas through research, hands-on experimentation and use of state-of-the-art facilities.

Often working in collaborations through experiential learning, students work to develop narratives that offer creative concepts and design executions. As they learn how to look for patterns-in-market, culture and geographic regions, they gain insight into people’s needs and behaviors.

When CCS launched the program in Color and Materials Design in 2014, it was the first and remains the only graduate program in the United States dedicated to this relatively young design practice.

Our location in Michigan with the highest concentration of industrial design jobs in the United States (US Bureau of Labor Statistics) enables access to excellent design talent, as well as experiential learning resources across the region.

We have welcomed students from a broad range of disciplines, including Product or Industrial Design, the Fine Arts and Art Practice, Craft and Material Studies, Interior Design, Entertainment Arts or Animation Design, Furniture Design, Communication or Graphic Design, Transportation Design, Architecture, Textile Design or Fiber. Often, students in this program seek to build their skills across a wider area, incorporating CMF design into their existing knowledge base.