--- title: "UCLA is splitting design media arts into three majors and applications open today" description: "UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts is adding three bachelor of arts degrees, in Computational Art, Design and Games, which start in fall 2027. Applications open today. The games major comes with access to the UCLA Game Lab, which in a city built on production is the part worth noticing." category: "Los Angeles" category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles author: "Gabriela Soto" published: 2026-08-01T22:51:35.000Z updated: 2026-08-01T22:51:35.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/ucla-is-splitting-design-media-arts-into-three-majors-and-applications-open-toda tags: ["ucla", "education", "design", "games", "westwood", "admissions"] --- # UCLA is splitting design media arts into three majors and applications open today UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts is adding three bachelor of arts degrees, in Computational Art, Design and Games, which start in fall 2027. Applications open today. The games major comes with access to the UCLA Game Lab, which in a city built on production is the part worth noticing. UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts, which has run a single undergraduate degree, is adding three: bachelor of arts programs in Computational Art, Design and Games, [ABC7 reported](https://abc7.com/post/ucla-adds-design-media-arts-majors/19612670/). They launch in fall 2027. Applications open today, August 1, 2026, [according to the department](https://dma.ucla.edu/events/announcements/dma-launches-three-new-majors). The department sits in the School of the Arts and Architecture, in the Broad Art Center in Westwood. ## What each one is The department's own descriptions are specific enough to be useful. **Computational Art** is for students making work with code, systems, data, interaction and emerging technologies, with computation treated as the material rather than the tool. **Design** covers graphic design, interface design, motion, creative coding, fabrication, publishing, animation, spatial practice, artificial intelligence and contemporary art, and the department frames it as cultural and artistic practice rather than problem-solving. **Games** is described as an arts-first study of game design and development, across both analog and digital forms, combining artistic, technical and conceptual methods. ## Why it matters here specifically The games degree is the one with an obvious relationship to the city outside the campus. ABC7 reported that the major includes access to the UCLA Game Lab, where students work alongside faculty, researchers and industry professionals. Los Angeles has one of the larger concentrations of game studios, visual effects houses and interactive production in the country, and a public university offering an arts-first games degree with a lab attached is a plausible on-ramp into that work. We would put it no more strongly than that. UCLA describes the majors as preparing students "for careers in evolving creative industries," which is a university's phrasing about its own program, and there is no enrollment figure, hiring data or named studio partnership in any of this to test it against. ## What the chair says Casey Reas, who chairs Design Media Arts, gave ABC7 the department's founding argument rather than a pitch: "DMA was built on the belief that artists and designers should help shape the emerging digital world rather than simply respond to it." Reas is a reasonable person to make that claim. He co-created Processing, the open-source programming environment that taught a generation of artists and designers to write code, and which is roughly the thing a Computational Art degree exists to formalize. ## What is not yet known The department has not published how many students each major will take, whether faculty are being hired, or what happens to students currently enrolled in the existing Design Media Arts degree. None of the material we could verify addresses any of that. Prospective students should go to the department's own admissions pages rather than relying on this article for deadlines, since application windows for UCLA arts programs involve portfolio requirements that vary by major and are the kind of detail that changes. ## Sources - [UCLA adds three design media arts majors](https://abc7.com/post/ucla-adds-design-media-arts-majors/19612670/) - [DMA launches three new majors](https://dma.ucla.edu/events/announcements/dma-launches-three-new-majors)