My name is Chris Courtney. I’ve been a designer and educator for over two decades.

I was about ten years into my career as a print designer when the iPhone arrived and changed everything. On the surface, designing for a new medium seemed straightforward enough, but the shift from paper to pixels would ultimately be the smallest part of the transition.

My journey has taken me to places I didn’t initially consider to be design and deeper into the business concerns of organizations than I ever thought I would be interested.

From initial research tasks to a realm far beyond the reach of coding, design touches everything. Design shapes society and policy. It’s inherently political as every decision is, regardless of our wishes otherwise.

I’ve spent the past several years packaging my experience into lessons that helped students land jobs at Apple, Microsoft, Disney, LinkedIn, Mozilla, and many other excellent organizations.

Having taught in traditional classrooms (Northwestern and Columbia) and led design programs at education startups (Bloc and Thinkful), I understand the complex challenges that today’s design students face. I launched New Pragmatic borrowing the best from those experiences while eliminating every ounce of administrative waste possible.

New Pragmatic is design education in its purest form. Designer-to-designer.