The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art academies in protest of limited creative autonomy, Parsons is one of the oldest schools of art and design in New York.

Parsons was the first school to offer programs in fashion design, interior design, advertising, graphic design, transdisciplinary design, and lighting design. Parsons became the first American school to found a satellite school abroad when it established the Paris Ateliers in 1921. It remains the first and only private art and design school to affiliate with a private national research university, in 1970 when it became one of the divisions of The New School. Organized in five departments, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a range of disciplines in art and design with students also able to combine additional classes and majors in other colleges of The New School.

First established in Manhattan in 1896 as the Chase School by its founder, American impressionist painter William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), who led a small group of artists away from the Art Students League of New York in search of a less traditional, more progressive institution. The Chase School educated several luminaries of early American modernism, such as Marsden Hartley and Edward Hopper. But whereas Chase was a talented artist and teacher, he lacked the business acumen to run a growing school; in 1898, under new management, it became the New York School of Art.

In 1904, Frank Alvah Parsons was hired by Chase as a professor at the school. Around the same time, Parsons studied under the tutelage of vanguard artist and educator, Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University. He graduated in 1905 with a degree in fine arts and became the sole director of the New York School of Art in 1911. Seeing a new wave of the Industrial Revolution, Parsons anticipated the importance of art and design to industries. His vision led to a series of firsts at the school: he established the first programs ever in fashion design (originally costume design) in 1904, interior design (originally interior decoration) in 1906, and graphic design (originally advertising and commercial illustration) in 1910. In 1909, the school was renamed the New York School of Fine and Applied Art to reflect the new offerings that would combine art and design. Parsons became the sole director of the school in 1911. Parsons advocated for a more democratized movement to design education stating "Art is not for the few, for the talented, for the genius, for the rich, nor the church," Parsons said in 1920. "Industry is the nation's life, art is the quality of beauty in expression, and industrial art is the cornerstone of our national art". Frank Alvah Parsons and alumnus William M. Odom established the school's Paris ateliers in 1921, with assistance from other long-time Parson's teachers, including artists Zerelda Rains and Grace Fuller.

Upon Frank Alvah Parsons' death in 1930, William M. Odom succeeded Parsons as director. In honor of Parsons, whose teaching philosophy and theories on the intersections between art and design steered the school's development and reputation, the school became the Parsons School of Design in 1941. In 1942, after directing the Paris location, Parsons alumnus Van Day Truex became director of Parsons until 1952, when soon after he became Tiffany & Company's design director and developed the firm's signature interiors and graphics.

As the curriculum developed, many successful designers maintained close ties with the school, and by the mid-1960s, Parsons had become "the training ground for Seventh Avenue." In 1970, through the efforts of future Parsons Dean David C. Levy, Parsons joined the New School for Social Research, allowing for the expansion of degree programs, research, and partnerships. In 1970, Parsons awards the United States first university degrees in fashion design, interior design, and lighting design.

In 2005, when the parent institution was renamed The New School, the college was rebranded as Parsons The New School for Design.

In 2015, Pentagram Principal Paula Scher led the official redesign of The New School's identity together with Parsons'. The aesthetics of the new identity were drawn from the signage and architecture of The New School's historic Joseph Urban building as well as elements from the recently constructed University Center building in 2013. The new branding utilizes a font called 'Neue', a customized version of the font 'Irma', which is the University Center's wayfinding font. Neue, which means "new" in German, was designed using a computer algorithm. The proprietary font has been named in honor of The New School, with a nod to The New School's progressive teaching philosophy. Pentagram worked with Parsons students to create a special environmental installation at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center as well as on the campus water towers to introduce the new identity. It was at this time the school reclaimed the name Parsons School of Design.^{[citation needed]}