Industrial Design
Industrial designers make the products we use every day and envision better ways for people to live and for businesses to operate. The work of industrial designers can be seen in almost every product or technology around you, including the monitor, smartphone or iPad you're reading this on; the car you drive; or the coffeemaker you use each morning.
What makes us different: a focus on collaboration and innovation
The University of the Arts’ bachelor's degree in Industrial Design helps students develop creative problem-solving skills. The four-year program is project-based, process-driven and collaborative, and stresses a design process that is rigorously analytical, speculative and creative.
Our faculty members are successful working designers, many as principals or partners of their own firms — including San Francisco and Philadelphia-based Introduction Design and RethinkTANK, a multi-disciplinary design and research studio— providing students the support and the independence to seek their own answers to a wide range of complex challenges. Another served as the longtime Programming Director for DesignPhiladelphia, one of the nation’s largest celebrations of design.
UArts Industrial Design students are actively shaping the world around them through individual and class projects — they are creating wearable emergency shelters for use after urban disasters and developing a line of furniture for Habitat for Humanity's ecologically sustainable LEED-certified model home among other exciting projects.
Where do UArts Industrial Design graduates work?
ID alumni work at a variety of industry-leading firms, both large and small, in areas like product design, exhibition design, research and strategy. Our graduates are designers for such nationally renowned firms and institutions as IDEO, Kohler, Walt Disney, Pentagram, Karim Rashid and the Smithsonian Institute. They also work at prominent Philadelphia companies and organizations, including Design Science, Otto Design Group and KieranTimberlake Architects. Many other graduates have started their own firms, such as San Francisco-based MONO, which designs high-end cases for musical instruments (and whose clients are members of the Roots, Modest Mouse, Jane’s Addiction and more), and the sustainable-design firm MIO and BlackneyHayes architects in Philadelphia.
