At the moment of its 20th anniversary, SVA MFA Design was ready for a rebrand. Five years ago, for their 15th anniversary, we introduced the first SVA MFAD wordmark. Nine simple, geometric letters arranged in a square, like products on a shelf. It worked like a stamp. This time around we wanted to give the students more to work with. For the 20th anniversary we built a system. This allows students to feature existing work instead of creating new work every time the school event needs marketing and communication.

Philosophically, the new system breaks MFAD out of the box that has become graduate design programs. It has a certain flair that better captures the spirit of the program, while winking at Paul Rand’s invisible reach through the generations.