It prepares students to create work with a personal voice that resonates with contemporary culture. The curriculum, combined with MICA's emphasis on liberal arts, prepares illustrators who are both visually and intellectually literate and technically adept, with an understanding of the history of the field-which is the history of all narrative art.

Illustration is art for the people: illustrators create work that is seen, enjoyed and judged by general audiences, not art specialists. The Illustration department is distinct from other majors at MICA in that it is not defined by a specific medium. Illustrations can be created by hand (drawing, painting, collage, assemblage, sculpture, printmaking, etc...), digitally (Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Corel Painter, Autodesk 3ds Max, Softimage and Maya, etc....) and increasingly a combination of both.

The language of Illustration is symbolic and narrative, rooted in the traditional codes of Western Art, but constantly affected by diverse contemporary and non-Western aesthetics.