In Design PF, art is considered the basis of design. If artists are, in Harald Welzer's words, "professionals in dreaming [...] of future possibilities", then designers can be seen as creators of future realities. With a priority on engaging with, in and with the present, which of course includes the inclusion of history, the study at Design PF begins with dreaming before it gets to designing.

At the undergraduate level, students are encouraged to explore a variety of artistic strategies through dialogue with faculty in art courses that span semesters and courses. Here, not only is knowledge from the environment of art (such as art history, aesthetics, semiotics, all of which are taught in the theoretical foundations) and other fields of knowledge taken up and techniques taught, but very particularly the recognition and strengthening of one's own abilities and the independent, experimental implementation of ideas and inspirations are encouraged. At the same time, what we call art resists any impression of a fixed definition. Art thrives on its diversity.

Each subject in the field of art is specific to itself and thus enriching in different ways, in itself and with special attention to the different orientations and ways of working of the respective courses of study.

Since artistic strategies produce very different ways of working depending on the medium, it will be tested and experienced how this can happen in drawing and how differently, for example, in sculpture. By working on the problem areas of color, surface, space, time, reality, the differences of possible approaches are experienced in the various disciplines.

The handling of color is different in painting (with paint and brush on various surfaces) than in photography (with exposure and camera, with pixel or film) and again different in av. Media (with film camera, green screen, lighting, post production with computer, animation etc). And again different is the reflection on what images and sounds mean and how they work. 

The surface, so obvious to drawing, painting and photography, also plays a role in a different way in sculpture and av.media. Space, which tends to be attributed to sculpture as a subject area, is also a theme in all other subjects in the form of translation or as pictorial space. In av.media, the complexity is further increased when the time factor is added and the time-based handling of image and sound is practiced. The results of these discussions in all art subjects can be individual works, but also series of works or installations in space.

In all subjects, attention to all the topics surrounding representation is trained in a special, respectively specific way.