Graphic Design Masters Theses
RISD’s graduate program in Graphic Design prepares students for professional practice by emphasizing the roles of social context, media and aesthetics in the production of visible language systems. As a reflection of the discipline itself, the program encourages a nimble and intelligent response to constant change and burgeoning technology, while building a strong foundation of formal, aesthetic and analytical knowledge.
Individual thesis investigation is central to the final year of MFA study and culminates in the comprehensive presentation of work representing an original voice for visual and verbal expression of design thinking. The thesis should be equal parts exploration, explanation, provocation and contribution. Guest critics participate throughout the year and in the year-end thesis review, which offers a forum for critical dialogue focused on each student’s contribution to the field of graphic design. All MFA candidates also submit a written thesis and as a group participate in the RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition, a large-scale public show held annually.
These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Theses from 2024
ASILI, Husna Abubakar
Graphic Desire, Michelle Belgrod
Never Real Historians, Emily Bluedorn
On the Impulse to Notate, Lydia Chodosh
This Is For You: A handbook for design students, Gabriel Drozdov
Soft Procedures, Alec Figuracion
Endless Form, Kaela Kennedy
Graphic Warmline, Soo Min Lee
Here—There, Glikeriya Shotanova
Variations on Noise, Clinton Van Arnam
Life of Things, Things of Life, Shiyue Wang
surface tension, Berett Wilber
Perform—Produce, Rebecca Wilkinson
Theses from 2023
Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer
Form Follows Feeling Follows Form, Harshal Duddalwar
Making time: Gentle invitations for radical slowness, Lian Fumerton-Liu
Superbland, Dougal Henken
Crossover Logics, Serena Ho
Connective Movements, Ian Keliher
Invisible Systems, Mina Kim
Press Play, Karan Kumar
Searching for New Landscapes, Halim Lee
Moving at the Speed of Trust, Sun Ho Lee
Access in Ambiguity, Moritz Lónyay
Infinitely Incredible Configurations, Jenni Oughton
Virtual Fantasy, Joey Petrillo
Surfacing: a (loose) manual on unlayering / stuff-making and hypervisibility, Zoë Pulley
OtherWorldly Gestures, Sadia Quddus
Input / Output, Zach Scheinfeld
Particular Proceedings, Ingrid Schmaedecke
Writ In Water, Jack Tufts
Theses from 2022
Ports of entry, Forough Abadian
Capture, control, circulate : can we queer regulatory power in Graphic Design?, Adie Fein
Alien Encyclopedia, Zengqi Guo
Re-order the order of thing, Yingxi Sabrina Ji
Openness, Qiwen Ju
!, Nick Larson
Oral History Interview with Preston McClanahan, November 8, 2022, Preston McClanahan, Holly Gaboriault, and RISD Archives
Connect: translating complexity through visual simplification, Ilhee Park
Other realms, Louis Rakovich
Slow ruptures; slow formations, Asta Thrastardottir
Theses from 2021
Open articulations, Matthew Bejtlich
Paperwork, Romik Bose Mitra
Community, harana & karaoke: towards a theatrical design, Ryan Diaz
Personal positioning system, Laura Diez de Baldeon
Parentheses asterisk ellipses, Everett Epstein
Refiguring relations, Daphne Hsu
CTRL SHIFT, Kit Son Lee
Jettisoning the frame: strategies for designing at the threshold, Will Mianecki
Future as medium, Georgie Nolan
Elsewhere: impressions of sense & nonsense, Madeline Woods
The relativity of value, Lai Xu
Theses from 2020
My millennial Asian fetishized American fantasy, Seyong Ahn
Temporal collisions, Lizzie Baur
Strata : lessons in latency, Mukul Chakravarthi
Re: Ornament, Aleks Dawson
A very large array, Hilary duPont
Oh wait, is this a loop?, Carl-Gustaf Ewerbring
Counter formation, Fabian Fohrer
Binge [Fantasy reality], Elena Foraker
How to do things with things, Emily Guez
Skew-morphic dream, Yoonsu Kim
Ancient hyper present, Sophie Loloi
EthnoGraphemes, Vaishnavi Mahendran
U+16E99, Bobby Joe Smith III
Something to see here, Weixi Zeng
Theses from 2019
Record : from signal to atmosphere, and the spaces between silence and noise, Amy Auman
Plenty : wanting, choosing,, overwhelming unloading, Christopher Cote
Among : a series of enactments, Joel F. Kern
Let's meet over there / Eury Kim., Eury Kim
Lateral movements : in multifaceted time and space, Jieun Kim
Making common, Elaine Lopez
Standards, rules, setting, Robert McConnell
Abjad orientations, Mohammed Nassem
Softweave, Annaka Olsen
Groundwork, Marcus Peabody
Body of work, Oliva de Salve Villedieu
Cosmosis, Angela Torchio
Re-creation : a package design for daily life, Wei-Hao Wang
Interface philosophy, June Yoon
Theses from 2018
This is public work, Nick Adam
Haunt : casual surrealism, Cara Buzzell
Placefulness, Ellen Christensen
Anachropomorphism!, Carson Evans
Lingua Franca, Tatiana Gomez Gaggero
Field guide : collected studies of a symbiont, Jennifer Livermore
Tiny Diasporas, Angela Lorenzo
Reading rooms, Jinhwa Oh
Space, Junk, Brandon Olsen
Hyperlink : connecting space, time, language, and technology, Marie Otsuka
Constellations, Maria Rull Bescós
Squishy Play, Lauren Traugott-Campbell
Monument for feeling : Notes from the Archivist, Melissa Weiss
Theses from 2017
Otra vez : hierarchy as designer, Jordyn Alvidrez
Double takes : secular magic & empathic vision, Lake Buckley
Playgrounds, Cem Eskinazi
Content-aware : investigating tools, character & user behavior, Llewellyn Hensley
Space as a practiced place, Elizabeth Leeper
Frame-work, Drew Litowitz
Scripting allographs, June Shin