Get a glimpse of the SDCT's Spring 2023 Showcase. For the first time, the Department of Design joined forces with the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies for a unique gathering of Austin’s creative community.

Every researcher had mentors who helped assimilate them into a life of scholarly work, and the process continues with their future mentees. These comprise the roots and branches of the academic tree of a single researcher. If we let these ancestors’ and descendants’ genders affect these trees like a “wind,” most curl nearly to the earth. To set these trees growing upright again we visualize giving differential weight to male and female researchers.

Brand guidelines for Pizza Kittyz, a pet-friendly pizza shop with the intention of making their clients purr with joy. This brand was born thanks to B.F.A. Design student Luis Angeles' little sister, who scribbled a logo onto a cardboard box as they were playing pizza shop.

Seismic Dance Event Poster Series is a project by undergraduate student, Gabriela Rivera. The series depicts headliners of the Seismic Dance Event: Fat Boy Slim, Jamie XX, and Shiba San. Traditional screen printing techniques were used in the design lab to achieve the final pieces.

Against the Current reassesses contemporary societal behaviours and invites viewers to consider new paths forward. Featuring thesis works from four graduating M.F.A candidates in Design, this exhibition explores analogue antidotes, challenges restrictive historical cycles, offers tools for BIPOC design students, and unpacks emerging autonomy. Integral to the work is a spirit of rebellion and resilience-a rejection of structural, cultural, and traditional restraints. 

This step-by-step tutorial for how to dye your hair at home brings to life a previously dull manual with vibrant color at each stage from beginning to end.

Lattice weaves together the thesis works of eight graduating M.F.A. candidates in Design, each probing the fragile connections between people, cultures, and environments. The projects sustain overlooked histories, reclaim informal spaces, challenge extrovert-centered norms, and imagine new ways of belonging. They navigate discomfort in air travel, explore trust in AI, and reframe human relationships with more-than-human worlds. Through cultural memory, speculative futures, and everyday artifacts, the exhibition reveals design as a latticework of resilience, critique, and care. 

Quaint Relics is an ongoing speculative exploration of electronic waste and its potential for reuse in different contexts such as furniture. Adapting e-waste into unconventional new products in this manner is intended to spark discussion regarding our consumption and disposal of electronics.

This project includes a semester long research journey of surveillance tools, child care techniques, for parents to protect and micro-manage their kids. The name "MyKid-netic" is essentially a play on words by combining the phrase "my kid" with the word "cybernetic."

Blue Violet is a book of deeply personal and lush photographs, drawings, and writing by Cig Harvey. It was a labor of joy for Design Professor Jeanette Abbink to interweave Harvey's lush, color-saturated photography with a motley of textual forms on French-fold style pages bound within the moody printed cloth hardcover.

Zac DeLane's family has called Texas home for four generations, and from small towns and big cities, their family has roots in a lot of different towns in Texas. This piece was designed to showcase Zac's family roots and history, while also serving as a centerpiece for their backyard space.

Becauseisms expresses emotional, societal, and personal provocations. The work is a reflection of the 2023 M.F.A. Design candidates' optimism and intention through design.