Art & Design College in Los Angeles, CA

Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles:
Otis College of Art and Design, based on Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, is an art and design college offering four year Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in fields that include Illustration, Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Architecture, Digital Media, Product Design, and more. We also provide Master of Fine Arts degrees in Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Public Practice, and Writing. Professional development and certificate programs are offered for non-degree students.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree Programs:

Foundation
Foundation provides core studies for life-long learning and professional practices in the visual arts by teaching fundamental skills that enable students to become adept, well-informed makers. Integrating core visual studies with Liberal Arts curricula enhances students’ ability to construct meaning using the formal elements of art and design.

Liberal Arts & Sciences
The department of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Otis College of Art and Design provides diverse students of art and design with an intellectually stimulating environment that cultivates the habits of mind and critical tools for students to become informed, creative, well-rounded artists and designers.

Integrated Learning
Integrated Learning provides all BFA students with a series of collaborative experiences that extend beyond the boundaries of their major, integrate disciplinary skills and knowledge, and are sited within a public context.

Artists, Community and Teaching (A.C.T.)
The ACT Program allows eligible BFA students to major in one area and concentrate in either Teacher Credential Preparation or Community Arts Engagement. Students choose ACT coursework as part of elective options based on their consultations with Department Chairs or faculty advisors and the ACT Coordinator. Students take 14-18 credits depending on their major and their selected ACT concentration.

Architecture/Landscape/Interiors
Strong recognition of the program is reflected in a growing number of Advanced Standing agreements with graduate programs in architecture, which afford A/L/I graduates an accelerated track toward a Master of Architecture I degree. Otis has three such agreements thus far: UIC School of Architecture, Woodbury University, and USC

Communication Arts
Communication Arts prepares students creatively, intellectually, and technically to meet the rigors of a dynamically evolving array of design professions.

Digital Media
Digital Media students learn to communicate and tell stories through art, motion, and design.  The primary goal is to strike a balance between traditional art and technology, and between individual vision and teamwork. By providing a fundamental understanding of digital tools and their creative applications, the department prepares graduates to meet the demands of a diverse and expanding job market. Leading designers for visual effects, Web, film, television, broadcast media, advertising, and video gaming guide the students.

Fashion Design
Originality in fashion design results from a rigorous process of developing and editing ideas to solve specific design problems. Fashion students, working with professional faculty and guest design mentors, are trained in all aspects of the design process. Working in teams, they create clothing for several mentors simultaneously, emulating the fashion design studio, and following the industry’s seasonal schedule.

Fine Arts
Fine Arts students thrive in an environment of creative freedom and strong support from a range of faculty members who are internationally exhibiting artists.
BFA majors: Painting, Photography, and Sculpture/New Genres
Students learn the basic premises and key skills in each medium, and explore these in more depth in elective classes. The emphasis is on "making," and each student receives a studio space. Graduates have developed a sense of personal mission, and understand the value of their work as artists in the world.

Product Design
Today’s product designer is a new breed of designer who has the ability to create, integrate, and communicate innovative product designs that entertain, enable, inspire, and transform the way people live.  Whether designing a fashion accessory, furniture, products for the home or office, consumer electronics, personal care products, mobility or medical devices, the product designer of tomorrow has the ability to design all kinds of products across various industries. Students experiment with new and green materials as well as smart technologies, and integrate fine art processes and design skills with basic functional principles.

Toy Design
The process requires Imagination (the ideation of a concept with unique features and patterns of play), Marketing, (understanding trends and toy placement in the marketplace), and Engineering (all aspects of manufacturing processes, materials, safety, and cost.) As the most comprehensive toy design program in the world, Otis offers an integrated curriculum that provides these skills, in the center of the toy and entertainment industries.

Master of Fine Arts Degree Programs:

Graduate Fine Arts
Students in Graduate Fine Arts develop a “personal vision” that has been filtered through history, gender, sexuality, culture and politics.  Graduate Fine Arts students acquire the necessary technical and theoretical resources to develop an understanding of the demands of a professional practice. The program promotes strong interaction and critical dialogue among all participants, encouraging students to converse in the language of art. Students produce work that reflects their ideas, needs and ambitions, as well as the challenges of the artistic environment, and contemporary issues and concerns.

Graduate Graphic Design
The MFA in Graphic Design provides a rigorous and challenging academic and studio environment for candidates interested in enhancing their current professional practice.  The 2 1/2-year program includes three consecutive eight-week summer sessions in residence and two spring sessions of mentored off-campus independent study.

Graduate Public Practice
The program, under the leadership of Suzanne Lacy, the renowned artist, educator, theorist of socially engaged public art and author of the influential Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, enriches an arts environment marked by a remarkable mix of art schools and a distinguished history of artistic innovation.  This past year, students were involved in a project in California's San Joaquin Valley, centered in Laton. The project is supported by a planning grant from the Ford Foundation, and focuses on the environment (some of the worst air quality nationally), the poverty (some of the highest poverty and school drop-out rates nationally), the economics of food production (especially vis-a-vis ever-increasing energy prices), and the loss of farmland (which also impacts housing).

Graduate Writing
For too long the serious study of contemporary poetry and fiction has been consigned to the English Department or to other disciplines that fail to consider the primary and complex practice of writing as a verbal art. Otis is uniquely positioned to introduce a new and comprehensive approach to the graduate writing degree. In asking “why Otis?” it is important to view our MFA program not only distinctive in the institutional market but also as an extension of Otis's historical mission to bring innovative arts education to Los Angeles. Our multi-disciplinary approach—writing, literature, critical theory, publishing and translation—is the ideal complement to the program's international emphasis, providing a singular opportunity to look at American writing in relation to other contemporary world literatures.