Department of Industrial Design

The Department of Industrial Design focuses on teaching the skills, knowledge, and dispositions required to facilitate product design for manufacturing industries. An industrial designer typically creates new product ideas or re-designs existing products in a collaborative effort with marketing, engineering, and production teams.

The mission of the Industrial Design Department is to provide a high-quality experiential learning environment to produce graduates who are critical thinkers and innovative problem solvers with a refined sense of aesthetics, technology, and culture.The department collaborates with the professional community to augment the development of skills, knowledge, and dispositions that enable graduates to immediately function as entry-level professional industrial designers.

Academic Programs

Industrial Designers create and develop product ideas and then communicate those ideas to clients and production entities through technical drawings, concept and final renderings, mock-ups, models and prototypes.

The curriculum at MSU Denver prepares students for professional design practice by teaching graphic and verbal presentation skills, as well as hands on technical skills, to enhance their innate creativity. Collaborative projects with other disciplines and industry partners are a vital part of the curriculum and typically occur in the design studio classes. Students also complete a professional internship as their senior experience to further enhance the real world learning the department strives for. Students are required to pass through a portfolio review process at the end of the sophomore year to allow registration for upper-division studio courses, thus maintaining the quality of the program’s graduates. The details of this process are outlined on the department website (msudenver.edu/ind) and available in hard copy at the department office, located in the Aerospace and Engineering Sciences building, suite 200. Graduates with an industrial design major earn a bachelor of science degree. A minor in industrial design is also available.

The program is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) and works with the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) to enhance the profession. The department has an active student IDSA chapter and faculty involved in the national leadership of IDSA. Through this solid foundation of an accredited curriculum, as well as real world learning opportunities, the program’s graduates are well equipped to meet the challenges of the competitive, industrial design industry.

Student Learning Outcomes for All Industrial Design Majors

To the standard of an entry level professional designer, graduating students should be able to:

Perform design research that contributes to the definition and solution of design problems.
Formulate multiple creative design solutions for a given problem, assess those concepts and select the most appropriate final design.
Demonstrate proficient skills in sketching and rendering with appropriate media, technical drawing, 3-D physical and computer modeling, and prototyping.
Develop final design solutions to optimize appropriate use of materials, manufacturing processes, user safety and marketability.
Prepare presentations that demonstrate quality visual organization, verbal skills, writing proficiency and professionalism.
Produce designs that address human-centered design and demonstrate an understanding of diverse cultural and global contexts.