Networking is easy when you don’t need to leave the classroom. Many of our faculty members hire a steady stream of students to intern at their agencies, providing them with invaluable professional experience and industry connections. Alumni stay connected and often enlist their former classmates on professional projects; there’s a built-in career network all around you.



Our students have interned and/or secured full-time positions at The New York Times, Apple, Google, HBO, NBC Universal, Warner Music Group, Meta, Equinox, MTV, NAYA, Shopify, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Zoom, Hearst, Madison Square Garden, and Horizon Sports and renowned design and advertising agencies including Pentagram, Deutsch, McCann, Dentsu Creative, COLLINS, Wieden + Kennedy, FCB NY, Buck, loyalkaspar, Hobbes, Mother Design, Sunday Afternoon, Mischief, Gretel, Mojo Supermarket, 72andSunny, Jones Knowles Ritchie, &Walsh, and Wolff Ollins.

Internships are also available right here on campus, within BFA Design and at the college’s in-house design studio, Visual Arts Press. Although internal, these roles are demanding and offer firsthand experience in a professional environment.

Add work from actual clients to your portfolio before you even graduate. Students recently partnered with the NASA Office of STEM Engagement, consulting with scientists and astronauts, to design posters promoting the upcoming Artemis II mission (check out coverage on NY1 News!)

In the past, students collaborated with Disney on Broadway for a theater display to celebrate The Lion King musical's 25th anniversary, worked with the James Beard Foundation and global non-profit WildAid on a food waste campaign for billboards across major U.S. cities, and created the logo and promotional assets for the launch of fashion and tech startup, GoodFit.

Stay tuned for more soon on our upcoming collab with PRINT!

Good design changes with the times, as does our ever-evolving curriculum, which adapts to current industry trends and incorporates cutting-edge technology to better meet the needs of our innovation-hungry designers. Explore game design, creative coding, generative design, augmented/virtual reality, and AI workflows, learning how to integrate these with motion graphics, interaction design, branding, design for fashion, and more.



Whether you’re meeting for class in the metaverse, manipulating images with sound and camera inputs, or designing a touchscreen dining table, you’ll keep your finger on the pulse, ready for the many design careers on the frontier of innovation. 

A prototyping hub exclusive to our program, the Wilde Lab is equipped with the latest tools and technology to transform digital ideas into physical reality. Branded packaging, product prototypes, zines, stickers, merch, and more come to life thanks to multicolor 3D printers, an embroidery machine, direct-to-surface UV printers, plotter/cutters, portable printers, and laser cutting and etching. 

Additionally, our DIC offers large-scale printing, bookbinding, 3D printing, and risograph printing, as well as state-of-the-art smart classrooms for experimentation with programs such as the generative design tool TouchDesigner and powerful 2D animation software Cavalry.

Discover the new and niche without committing to a full course, thanks to rotating workshops on trending topics taught by professional guests. Students have enhanced their knowledge of data-driven marketing, advertising pitch decks and promo videos, advanced Figma, physical computing, game design, code for interactive webpages, generative design, hand-lettering for signs, and more, with new workshops introduced each semester to reflect this dynamic industry.

Teamwork is a vital soft skill that enables our students to succeed in agencies and studios of all sizes, and nowhere is it better developed than during our bi-annual design hackathons. In one weekend, student teams respond to design briefs about climate change, communication challenges, and social issues and prototype a solution in just 24 hours using cutting-edge technology.

Teams receive mentorship and feedback from industry professionals, with past judges from Microsoft, Google, Meta, Verizon, and Instagram. Recently, one of our students secured a paid interaction design internship by leveraging their hackathon experience.

When your instructors aren't teaching, you can find them at Google, Pentagram, HBO, Amazon, Penguin Random House, Madison Square Garden, Hearst, COLLINS, AKQA, Shopify, Horizon Sports, Zoom, 72andSunny, and Jones Knowles Ritchie, to name a few. All faculty work in the industry, bringing up-to-the-minute field knowledge and network connections straight into the classroom.

Among our distinguished faculty are five Cooper Hewitt Design Award recipients and four AIGA Lifetime Achievement medalists, authorities in the field who have shaped design as we know it today.

Our An Evening With lecture series hosts design and advertising professionals at the top of their field (think Paula Scher and Natasha Jen from Pentagram, Leo Porto from PORTO ROCHA, Debra Bishop from The New York Times, and Bill Oberlander from OBERLAND) for exclusive discussions on industry insider tips, the creative process, and pathways to professional success.

Year after year, SVA ranks among the top design and advertising schools in the world based on competition wins alone, with 493 awards and recognitions just this year. Entering your projects into major design competitions, including Young Ones, Graphis New Talent, PRINT, Indigo, and the Webby Awards, is easy thanks to the support of department staff.

Hiring managers aren't the only ones who'll be impressed; award wins look great on applications for visas, fellowships, and master's programs, too.

Each May at Industry Day, hundreds of creative directors, hiring recruiters, and industry professionals attend the SVA-only networking marathon to critique graduating seniors' portfolios, forge connections, and even find their newest hire (it's where 72andSunny discovered their recent intern). Last year’s all-day event welcomed guests from Verizon, IBM, Instagram, Rockstar Games, ESPN, Morgan Stanley, Tiffany & Co., Penguin Random House, COLLINS, Red Antler, Koto, BUCK, and more.

Students are more than ready to present themselves and their portfolios with confidence on the big day, thanks to sophomore and junior year portfolio reviews and a senior year pitch development and professional practices class.

All seniors also take a course on intellectual property and copyright law, learning how to draft agreements, avoid copyright infringement, and register trademarks, design patents, and copyrights, among other practical legal wisdom.

Our students exhibit at world-class professional venues, including Rockefeller Plaza, SVA Theatre, along Madison Avenue, and in SVA’s Gramercy Gallery, where Spectrum NY1 News recently interviewed our students about a poster collaboration with NASA.

Students have the opportunity to showcase their work to a larger audience at our public "Début" showcases each spring, which impress crowds with playable, student-designed video games, interactive stations where hand gestures control coded interfaces, and AR-activated posters.

During EMERGE at the SVA Theatre, student work graces the same big screen that hosts events for the iconic Tribeca Film Festival. A panel of leaders in emerging tech and media introduces the student projects with a state-of-the-industry talk.

Great education is an investment, so we offer scholarship opportunities and support your applications for external scholarships as well. The SVA Alumni Society, the Visual Arts Foundation, AIGA, The One Club for Creativity, and other organizations offer scholarships to design students. Additionally, the department awards merit-based scholarships, which are determined by students' GPAs and end-of-year portfolio reviews.

Our student representative strives to create a sense of community while further connecting students with their program staff, planning parties, movie nights, and co-working sessions so students feel right at home in the Big Apple.

Connect more deeply with other students, faculty, and alumni through the Before & After podcast, where student hosts develop their on-air interview skills, and through SVA’s award-winning yearbook, where students work in a mini editorial design lab led by the Executive Director of the TDC to create custom typefaces and layouts.

Link with the larger SVA community as a student government leader with VASA, a member of one of our many campus clubs, a contributor to the Visual Opinion magazine, or a DJ for the WSVA radio station.