The Art option aims to train the students for the creation of contemporary art. In order to do so,  the student needs to have an intellectual curiosity, an openness to the world around them. The Art option allows the student to imagine an artistic problematic which is specific to him/her and allows him/her to define his/her place, and the place of art in society. In order for this to happen, he/she takes part in artist’s residencies and exhibitions from the second year on. The principal aims are artistic independence and collaborative practice.

In the later years of schooling, teaching is backed up with research on structures of Social Innovation in Art, most notably in non institutional networks which are run by the people who have set them up.

The permanent partners of the Art option are : Camac, the Centre d’Art Passages, the Vysocina in Czech Republic, the studio of Création Musicale Césaré, the association of  Prisme sponsors, the Ecoles Supérieures d’Art du Grand Est.

The option in Product-Space Design focuses on the creation of objects and how they are placed in a space by a creator with an authorship position. The process that is based around the user, the problematics of production, experiments with material, is also in part a result of the comprehension of the artistic issues that are at stake in design. The dialogue with crafts, the industrial problematics and its renewal are at the centre of these reflections. Two workshops with specific projects, in food design and in vegetal design, bring together students from different options and thereby address the question of the living in our environment.

With a highly professional approach, the option includes research and development with business partners, with national and international competitions from the 2^nd year of studies onwards. Every year, some projects are selected to be manufactured in limited editions, giving a unique visibility to the best students. The incubator and the business incubator of the ESAD are open to those who wish to set themselves up with an independent activity.

The ESAD is cited by Interni, Italian press, as being in the top three of product design schools in France. The permanent partners of the Product Space- Design option are : the Chaire IDIS, the VIA, Bernard Chauveau editions, the Paris Design Week and D Days, the competitive hub Matéralia.

The Graphic and Digital Design option gives priority to a form of creation that brings together visual,  textual, aural medias, either traditional or digital. Its frontiers go from communication to drawing typographical designs. In the final years of the course, the teaching of graphics is directed towards problematics specific to mobile devices and digital interfaces. With a course that is highly geared towards professionalisation, from the 2^nd year on, there are national or international competitions. From the 3^rd year the issues that are related to digital aspects are worked on with partners, companies and engineering schools. The concepts in this way can be deployed right through up to the development stage.

The permanent partners of the graphic and digital design option are Orange Lab, the Fondation Mines Télecom, the Institut Mines Telecom, the Centre International du Graphisme de Chaumont.

This option brings living into the designer’s education, the daily aspect of it that is the most intimate, the most shared, and in this option, eating is treated as an art : installation, performance, visual arts are part of the food design option practised in the ESAD. But it is also a form of design, which touches on a powerful societal theme, which involves our future. Food design is interested therefore in the context and the valorisation of agricultural production, from the transformation by crafts and industry, to the different distribution channels, BtoB or public, in commercial spaces and in tasting, in restaurants or in the domestic context.

An optional course during the first three years of the college in art or design, a master in specialised food design, and during the post graduate training, these different facets are developed in relation with the leaders of these branches, and in numerous partnerships, in the form of competitions, commissions, events. The aim of the years spent in the Master is to acquire a culture that is both cultural and practical : the universe of food and the practice of design.

The permanent partners of the food design option are the Université François Rabelais de Tours, Ferrandi- Ecole de Gastronomie, the lycée Gustave Eiffel, the Centre International des Vins de Champagne. The ESAD has been a publisher since 2004 of many works dedicated to food design.