SVA MFA in Design Criticism now accepting applications for Fall 2010

The new MFA in Design Criticism at the School of Visual Arts is now accepting applications for Fall 2010. This innovative two-year program trains students to research, analyze, and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications. Study with some of the best design writers and thinkers of our time, including: “Studio 360″ host and author Kurt Andersen; MoMA’s design curator Paola Antonelli; former editor of I.D. Magazine Ralph Caplan; Metropolis contributing editor Karrie Jacobs; and architecture critic Justin Davidson.

Download the D-Crit Section of SVA’s new Graduate Catalog.

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First-Years Present Google-Free Findings

This morning, first-year D-Critters presented research projects conducted 100% Google-free for their course Researching Design (aka “No Google”). Instructor Steve Heller and class guest Steven Guarnaccia weighed in with feedback.

D-Crit Gets Meta: Interviewing the Interviewers (Debbie Millman and Liz Danzico)

In D-Crit class Art of the Interview yesterday, second-year students picked the brains of interview mavens Debbie Millman and Liz Danzico, gleaning tips for future Q&As.

Gawker’s Gabriel Snyder Visits D-Crit’s Blogging Workshop

Gawker editor-in-chief Gabriel Snyder joins D-Crit first-years and instructor Elizabeth Spiers for The Blogging Workshop tonight.

Watch D-Crit Lecture Videos Online

If you missed any of our great lectures in previous semesters at D-Crit, fear not! Watch them online as videos here.

Second-Years Inside an Exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt Museum; First-Years Tackle Presentations and Prose at D-Crit

Today, second-year students head to Cooper Hewitt to get inside the Triennial with curators Matilda McQuaid, Ellen Lupton, Smith & McCarty (it’s the first day of the D-Crit course Inside an Exhibition).

Meanwhile, first-years get a morning presentation skills coaching from Yale University instructor Stephen Nickson, and then discuss Wharton and Defoe with Akiko Busch in Reading Design.

Design Observer: Alice Twemlow on Recreational Product Reviews

D-Crit chair Alice Twemlow’s most recent piece on Design Observer, “Howling at the Moon: The Poetics of Amateur Product Reviews,” locates amateur online product reviews within the democratizing tradition of design criticism (as practiced by Jane Thompson, Reyner Banham, Nicholson Baker, and other pioneers of the genre).