Matt Magill is a designer, illustrator, musician, educator, and all-around creative person from Oklahoma. Matt received his BFA in Visual Communication from the University of Oklahoma in 2013 and MFA in Graphic Design & Visual Experience from the Savannah College of Art & Design in 2025. 

Matt’s philosophy of design is that if designers intend to create and define the future, then they need to start treating their positions like it actually matters. A designer’s primary focus should always be on the improvement of people’s lives by using all the tools at our disposals that we have to do so. This means design should focus on empathy and accessibility rather than focus on profitability and engagement.

Matt has had the opportunity to work with Austin City Limits, SXSW, Greystar Worldwide, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, University of Texas, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and a bunch of others. He was also a breakout speaker at SEGD 2019, was one-of OKC Free Press’ NMF ‘25 Must-See Acts, and currently serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Oklahoma State University.

My research interrogates the dominant narratives in design and innovation, particularly the uncritical adoption of design thinking and its alignment with technological solutionism. Drawing inspiration from theorists such as Evgeny Morozov, I explore how design frameworks can perpetuate superficial engagement with complex problems, substituting visual polish and iterative speed for genuine social impact.

Design, as it is practiced today, often serves the interests of capitalism and scalability more than it serves human needs. My work critiques the normalization of “over-design”: solutions that are elaborate in form but hollow in function. I investigate how the language of innovation often masks the lack of real transformation, and how design culture valorizes novelty over necessity.

I am particularly interested in tracing the historical evolution of design thinking—from its roots in post-war interdisciplinarity to its current role as a corporate tool. This research challenges the myth of design as inherently progressive, revealing the ideological shifts that have turned an empathetic, experimental practice into a performative, risk-averse process.

Through written scholarship, collaborative inquiry, and practice-based research, I am looking to develop alternative models of design that are slower, deeper, and more human. These models reject the premise that all problems can be solved by design or illusion of progress and instead promote dialogue, critical reflection, and systemic understanding.

Teaching is not a the transmission of skills but as the cultivation of critical thinking. Design is not merely a discipline of aesthetics or functionality. It is interpretive, philosophical practice that must grapple with social, cultural, and ethical dimensions. I teach students to interrogate the tools, frameworks, and ideologies they are given, especially those, like design thinking, that promise easy solutions.

My classroom is a space where students are encouraged to ask hard questions: What is the problem beneath the problem? Who benefits from this solution? What assumptions are we making? I emphasize the importance of process over prescription, reflection over ritual, and empathy over efficiency. Students are asked not just to design, but to justify, critique, and iterate with purpose and accountability.

I challenge the seductive simplicity of step-by-step methodologies by foregrounding messiness, uncertainty, and failure as necessary components of real innovation. Rather than encouraging students to follow a predetermined path, I support them in developing independent frameworks of inquiry that are sensitive to context, resistant to trend-driven thinking, and grounded in human complexity.

Above all, I want my students to emerge not just as skilled practitioners, but as thoughtful citizens of the design community.