Chair's Message

Hello and welcome to the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM), where art and technology meet to push the boundaries of design, media thinking and practice.

2025 is a year of joyful anniversaries: Singapore turns 60 and ADM turns 20. In 2025, ADM entered the world’s top 20 art, design and media schools and had its first Emmy Awards winner (Samantha Lee, class of 2010).

Since I came to Singapore and ADM in 2005, the wonderful talent, great careers and high-class designs, films and animations that emerged from each cohort of students have never ceased to amaze me. I still feel the same excitement about our students today.

2025 is also a moment to look forward to. Artistic fields are converging and GenAI is emerging. ADM’s location at the heart of one of the world’s leading technological universities offers connections to computing and science, linking artistic opportunity to technological innovation. Positioned in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CoHASS), ADM students are ideally poised to learn about the societal responsibilities and ethical challenges associated with new technology.

Our undergraduate programmes educate you as artists/thinkers who acquire professional skills informed by original thought and analytical research competency. ADM maintains that a strong traditional foundation in art, design and media remains the rock to build on; to achieve greatness, the use of any technology must be led by original artistic skills and vision.  In 2025, we are launching a new curriculum that mixes disciplinary excellence with an interdisciplinary and holistic understanding of the world around us.  Students will be able to customize their own career path across art, design and media fields, and specialize in one of our cutting-edge pathways: Animation and Game Art, Cinematic Arts, Communication Design and Photographic Practice or Transversal Design.

As an ADM student, you benefit from NTU’s pioneering Interdisciplinary Collaborative Core (ICC) and engage in joint programmes with other schools across NTU, tapping into an exceptional educational ecosystem. Additionally, through NTU’s global network of partner universities, you are encouraged to broaden your horizons through overseas exchanges and immersive international experiences, providing a truly global perspective to your education.

ADM’s outward-facing, cutting-edge mindset makes our students ideally positioned to rise to the challenges of a rapidly developing world. This is strengthened by our continued close contacts with the industry – including instruction by practitioners who share state-of-the-art techniques and internships with leading industry players. 

Our graduate programmes reflect ADM’s position in a world-leading, research-intensive university, with many of our faculty members publishing scholarly essays and books with international, top-tier publishers and conferences. You can benefit from this experience in our research-based master and PhD programmes. ADM responds to rapidly changing industries with innovative concepts in graduate education with our new MSc in Game Design, Art and Technology (GDAT) programme, jointly offered by ADM and the College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS). The 1-year programme offers you a comprehensive understanding of creative vision and technological implementation. This is only the first of a series of new course-based master’s programmes that will complement our future-oriented education concept.

This is not the first time that our fields have been transformed by new technology. About 30 years ago, the first digital revolution transformed the creative industries fundamentally. Ever since, the key to success has rested upon strong conceptual abilities that transcend any time-bound trends and the acquisition of new abilities along the way. At ADM, we seek to graduate not just creative professionals but visionary thinkers and leaders.

Welcome to ADM – a world of discovery and innovation!

Professor Hans-Martin Rall

Chair