Creative Core

Hone your creativity

Whether you’re majoring in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design or you want to take creative courses to enrich your degree, Creative Core courses will introduce you to ways of thinking and working that are central to the creative process and to artistic production in a variety of disciplines.

Creative Core will give you the skills to pursue any of our six undergraduate degrees or minors.

Explore your interests + discover new ones

People stand looking at a classroom chalkboard.
A person paints.
A person reveals a print impression.

Take Creative Core courses during your first two years

All undergraduate majors in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design are required to take Creative Core courses. For a full list of requirements, check the academic bulletin.

Explores the fields of art, design, and merchandising within the contemporary landscape of creating and making. Identifies where these disciplines have mutually reinforcing values and opportunities for interdisciplinary study. Provides a common experience for art, design and merchandising students.

Explores color’s fundamental principles and formal elements; its contextual meanings and sociological connotations; and its significance within the fields of art, design and merchandising. Cultivates visual sensitivity, develops aesthetic knowledge and the production of creative work through studio practices.

Development of visual awareness and coordination of perceptual and manual skills; seeing, representing, and inventing on an experimental, exploratory level in two dimensions. Includes placement, scale, volume, light, formal articulation, and investigations of graphic tools and media.

Volume, space, material, and physical force studies provide the basis for exploration of three-dimensional form; includes carving, construction, and modeling, using wood, plaster, and clay.

Interdisciplinary experiences serve as the foundation for discussion and written and verbal responses. Students select from a range of activities including lectures, cross-critiques, site visits, interviews, class visits, museum exhibitions, and performances to observe, question, and compare art, design and merchandising disciplines.

Interdisciplinary experiences in art, design, and merchandising serve as the foundation for discussion and written and verbal responses. Students select from a range of activities including lectures, cross-critiques, site visits, interviews, class visits, and selected exhibitions.

A variable topic studio course that focuses on skill development and technical manipulation of materials within the specific traditions of a particular discipline. Emphasizes fundamental principles of art and design within a discipline. Designed around a variable topic such as image, time, narrative, space, materials, and markets.

Take the first step on your creative journey