Graphic Engineering and Digital Media Design Undergraduate Programs

Graphic engineering and digital media designers are often creatively-minded with a knack and eye for artistic quality, aesthetic, and design. They often thrive in teams, are self-starters, intuitive, and organized. Some popular career paths for graphic engineers and digital media designers include working for animation production studios and interactive software companies, but many go on to work in healthcare, software programming, and pursue graduate degrees in their field. The top schools for students interested in graphic engineering or digital media design are:
 

  1. University of Pennsylvania
    The Digital Media Design Program offers students at UPenn the opportunity to pursue a BSE (Bachelors in Engineering and Science) degree and is housed within the Computer Graphics Department. The program requires students to take 6 courses in math, 4 natural science courses, 12 computer science and engineering courses, 9 communication and fine arts courses, 7 social science & humanities courses, and 2 free electives. This degree is a truly unique combination of art and engineering, giving students a solid foundational knowledge in engineering and graphic design to help them create and develop new techniques, software, and graphics applications. The DMD program emphasizes that it is not a fine arts program, so while submitting a portfolio with your application is encouraged, it is not required. Students are expected to involve themselves in the programming and mathematics components of the program just as much as they do the fine arts aspects.

  2. Stanford
    The Graphics track within the BS Computer Science Department program provides students with an intensive course of study. One of ten CS tracks within the degree program, students are required to take 25 units and 7 classes within the track to satisfy the requirements. Classes within this track include beginner classes like Introduction to Computer Graphics and Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory and also offer Computer Graphics classes focusing on Geometric Modeling & Processing; Image Synthesis Techniques; and Animation and Simulation. Track electives offered include Photography I, Digital Art I, Two-Dimensional Imaging, Visual Thinking, Digital Image Processing, and more.

  3. New York University
    The NYU Tandon School of Engineering offers an Integrated Digital Media program. Students can pursue their BS or apply for an accelerated BS/MS program. Students interested in everything from computer programming and 2D and 3D graphics to film and photography can focus on and learn the technical and engineering foundations of these topics while they expand their artistic and design skill set. The program is 30 credits and the core courses consist of: Ideation and Prototyping; Creative Coding; Media Studies; and Media Law. Students can take a number of other courses in like augmented reality, design and development, interaction design and more.

  4. Georgia Institute of Technology
    Students can pursue a BS in Computational Media (BSCM) through a collaborative degree between the College of Computing and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) within the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Students choose one LMC thread and one CS thread, which result in choosing one of the following sets of curriculum:

122 hours of classes are required for graduation.

Graphic engineering and digital media design is an incredibly interesting, complex, and niche field of engineering. There is a big opportunity for success in this field, and we’d love to talk to you more about it if you think this might be of interest to you (or even if you have a question about it!). Email or call us with your questions--we’d be happy to talk more about it with you.