Assistant professor Sajad Amini and students designers Skylar Baker, Izzy Lima, and Magda Wilhelm were honored with a 2025 Communication Arts Award of Excellence for OPUS, a 2-color inkjet/screenprint poster created to promote the 2024 School of Design capstone showcase event.
DePaul Originals Game Studio is an interdisciplinary lab that brings together game artists, designers, engineers, sound designers, and producers to work together in an ongoing large studio experience.
Faculty and students in new innovative labs at CDM, Matters at Play, directed by faculty Lien Tran, and PUSH Studio, directed by faculty LeAnne Wagner, are collaborating on the design of a VR experience to train law enforcement in trauma-informed and victim-centered interviewing techniques when investigating sexual assault.
Mike DeAnda originally co-developed Golden Mart during the early months of shelter-in-place COVID-19 ordinances. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2021, this solo tabletop roleplaying game focused on a customer service employee working the night shift as a magical catastrophe down the street threatens the fabric of society was shipped in September 2022.
Nate Matteson led the design team that created the 0xEAE Boost, designed to be a robust, modular, and extensible pedal platform both inside and out.
Featured Work
Faculty Creative Areas
Shiro Akiyoshi
Digital imaging, illustration, and montage, combining digital and traditional Japanese image making processes
Sajad Amini
Graphics, animation
Mike DeAnda
Games studies, queer studies, gender and media, design research
Jes Klass
Game development
Nathan Koch
Generative and computational design, sound, and immersive experiences
Nathan Matteson
Design, interactive media
Jessica Meharry
Design ethics, social impact design, design futures
Denise Nacu
Design of technology tools, learning, design thinking, data dashboards and visualizations, online social learning networks, learning analytics, design patterns, experience design
Heather Quinn
Design fiction for ethical worldbuilding—artificial intelligence + metaverse.
Brian Schrank
Game design, virtual reality, augmented reality, physical games, folk games, art games, games and the avant-garde, serious games, political games, experimental games, indie games, game criticism.
Lien Tran
Design, design strategy, social impact design, game design, game development, indie games, transformational games, games for change, serious games, social impact games, tabletop games, interaction design, UX, UI, human centered design, design thinking, web design.
Paige Treebridge
Queer computing & HCI, with research in: sense-of-well-being online, computational boundaries of human experience, oppression and erasure in social media.
Allen Turner
Interactive fiction, exploring culture and metaphor with play.
LeAnne Wagner
Design, education, game development.
Jess Westbrook
Design, coding, data analysis and visualization, data-driven speculation and futures, multimethod research and mixed methods research, transdisciplinarity, complexity theories.
Richard Wetzel
Serious games, game design, augmented reality, virtual reality, location-based games, pervasive games, learning experiences, ideation techniques.
Lee Zelenak
Graphics, animation, design, branding, typography.