The Chair of Interior and Graphic Design was founded in 1990 by Associate Professor N.N..Lyaptsev. The staff of the Chair consists of 15 people.

The Chair trains interior designers for residential and public buildings as well as graphic designers for advertising business, photodesign, and book graphics. During the period of study students are equipped with knowledge of art disciplines and technology of interior components and materials, building technology and modern materials, printing business. This type of knowledge helps students to start practising design whilst as undergraduates on a professional level.

Training provided the Chair is based on two main principles – recruitment of experienced designers (theoreticians and practitioners) and combination of design classes with real tasks and conceptual design oriented towards the future. This approach helps train specialists who are capable of adapting quickly to reality and foreseeing their professional career.

The Chair consists of several workshops where professionally practising designers work together with students on real tasks often connected with competitive orders. This method of creative workshops has shown itself to be an effective for of training since it is connected with a hand-to-hand transfer of professional expertise and with joint work between professor and student.

The staff of the Chair are mostly experienced people, who are engaged in practical design work along with teaching. This type of work involves real orders and implementation of interior design projects, advertising, photographic and graphic materials.

Graduates in interior design feature the ability to meet design and concept challenges, design specific interior elements , elaborate on ergonomic, process and structural issues.

Graduates in graphic design can work in graphic design area, advertising business, publishing, etc. Therefore the programme covers all the range of professional skills and competencies essential for graphic designer from the use of computer to product promotion and marketing.

The Chair was commissioned by the Regional Government of the Sverdlovsk Oblast and the city administration of Ekaterinburg to design interiors for the cancer centre, for the international sector of the city airport, numerous administrative buildings including the building of the Regional Government, and the city hall. Among the clients of the Chair there have been major banks and companies. Together with students the staff of the Chair take an active part in the design of various festivities and events organised by the city and charities.