Shape grammars are a powerful formal system for the generative description, interpretation and evaluation of designs.

Sketching for Creativity

With AI transforming how we create images designers are being challenged to rethink the role of drawing. Yet even in this era of AI, one truth hasn’t changed: designers think with their pencils. Sketching by hand sharpens the eye and the mind, building an instinctive understanding of form, scale, proportion, and construction. More than a technical skill, it’s a creative engine—tapping into parts of the brain where inspiration sparks, imagination flows, and creative ideas come alive.

The Sketching Creativity is a screen free course that develops students’ skills through hand-drawing exercises that sharpen both imagination and technique. Students practice the fundamentals of perspective drawing, sketching from observation, quick gesture studies, cartooning and doodling, character design, and storyboarding. The course introduces a variety of media and materials used in sketching and drawing, encouraging experimentation and personal expression. 

Special Topics

Explore various experience design methodologies and techniques for creating interactive environments that weave together interactive digital content with our tangible, physical surroundings.

Introduction to modeling, rendering, and animation with Alias Studio software.

For graduate students holding graduate research assistantships.