CCS MFA

There is growing awareness in the business world of the importance of design to achieving corporate success.

The designers who succeed in the new environment will be those who can Innovate, Strategize and Collaborate.

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.

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. Close ↑

Interdisciplinary Design: The Interdisciplinary path raises awareness about factors impacting the design world, such as technology, environmental issues and social change, and will help you find ways of addressing each in your work. Each student will participate in at least two team-based studio projects that result in high-quality visual material (sketches, 2D/3D renderings and layouts) and/or a 3D model, created digitally or by hand.

Transportation Design: The Transportation option also focuses on social change and environmental issues. With our institutional commitment to the designer as "maker and doer," the studio format is at the heart of this program's curriculum. You will encounter multiple projects that allow you to follow the process from extensive, rigorous research to completion.Close ↑

CCS programs provide basic study in business as well as advanced study in design. MFA students will learn business fundamentals from faculty of the University of Michigan's renowned Ross School of Business. This partnership with a premier business school provides graduates with the foundational tools required for implementing design concepts, making strategic business decisions, and becoming effective leaders in organizations. Close ↑

Joanne Healy
Associate Dean
MFA, Yale University
BA, Wesleyan University

Joanne Healy joins CCS with more than 20 years of strategic marketing and design experience in the areas of brand management, corporate communications, and environmental and interactive design. She started her career as a senior designer with Stuart Ash at Gottschalk+Ash International in Canada. Returning to the United States, she was managing director of Optima Group, a management consultancy in Fairfield, Connecticut, and then became vice president of the Interactive Strategies Group with the investment management firm T. Rowe Price Associates in Baltimore, Maryland.

Mark West
Paul and Helen Farago Chair of Transportation Design
MBA, University of Westminster, London; BS, Art Center College

Mark West has some 20 years of direct industry experience, most recently as senior design manager for Visteon Corporation, a tier-one design, engineering, and manufacturing company that serves the global automotive industry. At Visteon, he was responsible for developing and managing the corporation’s design and marketing activities. He also led research and development of interior design concepts for production and concept vehicles for major North American and Asian manufacturers, including Ford, Lincoln, Dodge, Jeep, and GM’s joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation of China. Prior to Visteon, West was a design manager for Ford’s Automotive Components Division with assignments in the United States and Europe. West also spent several years as a lead designer at Powers Design International, a California-based multi-faceted industrial design and consulting firm whose clients included an international roster of companies. At Powers, West completed projects for Ford, Textron Automotive, Reebok, and Sorel. West began his career at Industrial Design Research in California where he developed set designs for Amblin Entertainment’s production of "SeaQuest DSV," a popular science-fiction adventure TV series. Since leaving industry for higher education, he has taught at CCS where he has also served as Assistant Chair and Interim Chair of Transportation Design.

Maria Luisa Rossi
Chair of MFA Design
MID, Domus Academy, Milan, Italy
BA, ISIA, Florence, Italy

Maria Luisa Rossi is an internationally acclaimed designer and educator. As an undergraduate in Florence, Italy, her work was featured in the prestigious Domus magazine, earning her a scholarship to attend the premiere master’s program in industrial design at the celebrated Domus Academy in Milan. She spent two years in Paris as chief concept designer at ARPE, where she designed interiors for private residences and Japanese hotels. She founded the design consultancy Iavicoli & Rossi in Tokyo, creating furniture and home accessories for manufacturers that included Zeus Noto, Ravarini Castoldi, and Anthologie Quartett. After time in Los Angeles, she returned to Florence in 2002 to become a professor at Polimoda, a leading fashion design and marketing institute, and at ISIA, an industrial and communication design school. She has also taught at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, and has conducted workshops at Singapore’s Design Center and the Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Appliqué in Geneva, Switzerland. Close ↑

Founded as the Society for Arts and Crafts in 1906, CCS heritage runs deep in Detroit. The College recently financed a massive rehabilitation and redevelopment of the historic Argonaut Building. Located in Detroit's New Center, the Albert Kahn-designed facility once served as GM's first research and design studio. Now called the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education, the building constitutes a new second campus site for the College. In addition to graduate programs, the Taubman Center houses undergraduate programs in design, student living, community education and outreach activities, and a new public middle and high school with a special focus on art and design, known as the Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies.

Furthermore, the College has reorganized its existing Walter and Josephine Ford Campus in the Cultural Center. The programs of Crafts, Fine Arts, Photography, Entertainment Arts, and Illustration now have room to grow. The project transforms the institution while providing new educational opportunities for Detroit youth and advancing the renewal of the city. Close ↑

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.

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. Close ↑

CCS is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Documents regarding accreditation are available in the Executive Office upon formal request.

In order to make the accreditation process responsive to a broad range of constituents, the accrediting agencies invite the public to provide written comments about the College's qualifications for continued accreditation. If you wish to comment, please contact either agency by letter or email:

The Higher Learning Commission
30 North La Salle Streets, Suite 2400
Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504
www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org

National Association of Schools of Art and Design
11250 Roger Bacon Drive, Suite 21
Reston, Virginia 20190-5248
http://nasad.arts-accredit.org
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