This research-led and practice-based MA addresses the needs of graduates from furniture and related discipline backgrounds, or those who wish to collaborate with professionals in the field. Our Furniture Design MA is one of several postgraduate design courses that co-exist at the Cass, offering rich opportunities for the collaborative and multidisciplinary approach that is a feature of the current and future design sector, and a requirement for success in the field.
The future is largely shaped by design decisions, which implies a responsibility for designers to combine experimentation and radical thinking with care, effective research and collaboration with those who will be affected by the outcomes of designers' work. The work of a designer is not limited to ensuring that furniture is safe and functions well.
You'll want to imbue your work with meaning, to use it to communicate, to engage emotions and inspire response. Furniture also needs to be designed to be attractive and desirable in the marketplace and relevant to consumers, meaning you'll need an exhaustive overview of current and forthcoming furniture products in order to be competitive.
The Master course intends to form knowledgeable designers of the most advanced models of relationship between the product development processes, market dynamics and technological developments. It also intends to complete the training of professionals in R&D, marketing and brand management in the furniture sector, offering them a better understanding of design management skills as a lever to create a competitive advantage.
The Master is based on the capacity of Italian companies, working in the furniture industry, to use design as a fundamental lever of competitive advantage and a structural element of corporate culture. The core of the program is focused on the knowledge generated from the advantageous relationships instilled between the Italian production system and the network of professions involved in design. The Master sets its cultural roots in the “Italian model” of rapport between enterprise and design, while also aiming to develop new knowledge in innovation that responds to the challenges posed by technological, social and market changes.
The program’s structure takes on a systemic vision of the role of design in the furniture industry, teaming new fields of interest to the traditional focus on product development, along with the growing importance of brands and its tangible and intangible elements of expression.
This pathway enables you to develop your own individual approach to spatial design within a creative multi-disciplinary environment . It supports the development of a personal trajectory while providing room for exploration, and encourages you to explore ideas and issues concerning design of the interior in numerous environments, from the room to the city. You can explore areas of landscape architecture, exhibition design, interior design, furniture design and design for the stage.
Course Overview
Our Master’s programme has been designed to support and enhance the skills of art and design practitioners who want to work in the cultural and creative industries. Awarded by Falmouth University and delivered in partnership with Hearst Magazines UK, publishers of ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar, together we have designed an exciting and industry-connected Master’s to equip you for the real world.
The 12-month MA supports students across a range of Art & Design specialisms and you will be given the unique opportunity to explore your area within an interdisciplinary global culture. Bringing together students from a variety of disciplines through dialogue, idea-exchange and collaborative activities, the course prepares students for the hybrid and dynamic nature of contemporary creative practice. By enabling the pursuit of specialist subject expertise alongside opportunities to acquire the skills, experience and outlook necessary for professional success, we give our graduates the confidence to take the next step toward building their own creative futures.
The course is open to graduates from any art and design related degree subject and who already have knowledge and experience of a specialist area. Our MA will allow you to enhance your skills within your existing area, taking it in your own direction with support from a subject tutor. We currently support pathways in Fine Art, Communication Design, Illustration, Animation, Photography, Fashion Design, Fashion Communication, Product Design, Craft and Spatial Design.
Alternatively, you may be looking for a Master’s degree, but you are not clear which specialist pathway to follow, this course is designed to support those students arriving from a variety of undergraduate programmes with varying degrees of focus. The scope of the award in Art & Design is flexible enough to provide opportunities for you to experiment and try out new approaches before finding your focus.
Unique Opportunities
This programme offers outstanding specialist tuition combined with extensive academic contact and studio access. As a Master’s student, you will have:
The inter-disciplinary nature of the course and the teaching team, along with the wider staff expertise within the college means that specific tuition can be provided on a ‘bespoke’ basis if and when needs arise. In addition to support from academic staff, you will have regular group and one-to-one access to our Study Skills Coordinator for support with writing, research and academic skills.
Our dedicated Welfare Team are resourced and prepared to support all students. Should you require help with English language, support is available from our in-house provision.
Course Structure
The course is structured to provide you with a wide range of activities in the modules at the start of the course, together with the opportunity to experiment and explore different methods and approaches. As you move through the programme you will then start to focus and identify individual ambitions, and plan and execute your final project.
Semester One
EXPERIMENTAL PRACTICE
Introduces you to new methods and approaches. You will take part in a series of set projects, which will encourage collaboration, experimental practice and creative activity.
THEORY AND RESEARCH
Within this module you will be exposed to a series of lectures and seminars around a series of shared themes that cut across theory and practice. You will be inspired to try out fresh and innovative methods in practice and you will work collaboratively and individually.
Semester Two
FOCUSING PRACTICE
This module will support your development of independent and self-initiated project work in your specialist area. To build your portfolio you will take part in live briefs set by our partners in the creative industries and supported to enter local and international competitions.
ART & DESIGN FUTURES
You will be asked to look ahead by engaging in the issues shaping the professional practice of art and design today. Lecturer talks will introduce you to a diverse range of contemporary art and design practices to inspire and orient your own career pathways. This module also gives you the opportunity to organise and complete a work placement enabling you to gain valuable professional experience.
Semester Three
FINAL MAJOR PROJECT
You will spend the final semester working on a self-initiated project in your area of specialism, underpinned by the cross discipline culture of the course. Your final submission will be a portfolio of work and a written report culminating in a final MA show.
Careers and Employability
With staff and visiting tutors active in the creative industries worldwide as researchers and practitioners, as artists, designers, writers, and curators you will be exposed to issues, debates and challenges that are transforming art and design practice in the 21st century.
More specifically, the modules encourage you to reflect upon the broad and hybrid nature of art and design and the emerging global workplace in which you will ultimately take your next steps. To offer you real-world experience through live briefs and the work placements, we collaborate with both international media and communication organisations (such as our partner Hearst Magazines UK) as well as local creative businesses on our doorstep in Cambridge—one of the UK’s centres of leading-edge creativity and innovation.
Visit the website for full specifications: http://www.csvpa.com/art-and-design/ma-art-design/course-details/about.htm
Click here to apply online: https://www.csvpa.com/apply-online/step1
Study interaction design at an advanced level and explore new approaches to design creating dynamic proposals that respond to the needs of our rapidly changing society.
At Sheffield Institute of Arts interaction design is cross-disciplinary and investigates human-technological futures via design related interactions that lie between the digital and the physical. Using a practice based approach you explore the designing of interactive digital products, environments services and systems.
Interaction design is most often studied by graduates from a variety of backgrounds including • interaction design • digital media • fine art • product design • graphic design • furniture design • architecture • computer science. Your projects are supported by lecturers who are design specialists, researchers and practitioners. Modules are supported by lecturers who are design specialists in areas as diverse as • exhibition design • HCI • medical products • materials development • design thinking • social design • design anthropology.
During the course you work with experts in other departments as well as outside of the University.
As a postgraduate design student you join an established network of creative people that encourage and support you to drive your studies to the next level. Our postgraduate framework of design courses has been designed to allow you to come together with students from different disciplines, backgrounds and cultures to share teaching and learning experiences and explore your creative identities through dialogue and practice.
The primary intention of the programme is to allow you to achieve your personal employment ambitions, whether as a design professional in the creative industries, or in related areas such as marketing or research. You are also well placed to go onto further study at PhD level.
Employability
The course has a strong vocational focus to prepare, encourage and develop your confidence for employment.
The MA/MFA programme has a strong relationship with the University’s Art and Design Research Centre (ADRC), who take an active part in engaging MA Design students in research, knowledge transfer and live projects. You are also encouraged to seek industrial sponsors or collaborators for your individual project work and are given advice and support in doing this. This long established link with our Research Department supports a continuing tradition of graduates from the MA/MFA working as research assistants and/or continuing their studies to PhD.
If you are a part-time student in relevant employment or on sabbatical, you have the opportunity to plan course projects based in your workplace and relevant to your own and your employer's aims. This brings real-world experience to the course. You may go on to work as a professionally employed designer or design manager, work independently as a designer/producer or work as a researcher in design or new product development. You may also wish to go into teaching design in further and higher education.
Project-based course
You choose your own project content and this is supported by lectures and seminars dealing with professional practice issues and reviewing your progress. You also take part in regular group and individual tutorials.
Your final major project is the culmination of your research and studio-based design practice. It demonstrates that you can deal with difficult contemporary questions and take a leading role as a design professional.
Research-led expertise
We are one of the oldest established art and design institutions in the UK, renowned for producing internationally recognised research. Your projects are supported by lecturers who are design specialists in areas as diverse as medical products, materials development, furniture and sustainability.
Vibrant and supportive learning environment
During the course you regularly take part in constructive critical debates about your own work and that of your peers. You need to communicate your research, ideas and designs in ways that are appropriate to professional leadership.
You study alongside MA and MFA Design students for part of your course and benefit from a vibrant, international, collaborative and supportive postgraduate environment.
Excellent facilities and creative resources
You have access to a huge range of creative resources to experiment and engage with including • 3D printing for rapid prototyping • state-of-the-art hardware and software • photography studios • a creative media centre • a gallery • well-equipped workshops.
You also have access to our award-winning learning centre featuring a specialist art, design and media library and extensive online resources.
MA and MFA study
MA and MFA students complete the same modules during the course except that MFA students complete an extra project module. The MFA project encourages you to develop professional skills that help you to identify, instigate, and deliver projects with external partners, such as communities, galleries or businesses. You find a project partner, agree a brief and then deliver the project to a professional standard.
This course is part of the Sheffield Institute of Arts (SIA), an amazing, diverse community of makers – where staff, students and partners work as equals to deliver real innovation and creativity. SIA opened in 1843 and is one of the UK's oldest Art and Design Schools. We have recently moved into the Head Post Office, a redesigned Grade II listed building. It includes state-of-the-art workshops which provide you with a unique studio-based learning environment in the heart of the creative community.
FULL-TIME STRUCTURE
Semester one
• project 1 • theory supporting practice
Semester two
• project 2 • negotiated project
Semester three
• major project
Semester four – MFA students only
• MFA project
PART-TIME STRUCTURE
Semester one (year 1)
• theory supporting practice • negotiated project
Semester two (year 2)
• project 1 • project 2
Semester three (year 3)
• major project
Semester four – MFA students only (year 4)
• MFA project
Assessment and feedback are vital parts of the learning process in creative disciplines. Most assessment is through individual project work which combines research and creative practice. Assessment calls for both excellent creative work and well-documented research.
As a graduate from this course you might become a • creative technologist • experiential marketer • interaction designer • artist • designer • maker • product designer • design researcher • interface designer • systems designer • UX designer • design academic • PhD student.
This course is an innovative collaboration between Manchester School of Art and the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University. It brings together students from creative and manufacturing backgrounds to foster original approaches to product and furniture design for manufacture whilst exploring personal philosophies and cultural contexts.
Supported by extensive hand, machine and digital workshops across a range of materials, you will investigate and challenge the application and use of materials and processes within making and manufacturing to embrace opportunities for innovation across a breadth of product and furniture design practices.
As part of the wider MA/MFA Design Network, a series of options units are delivered to enable you to further expand your creative agendas and design methodologies. Within these options, you can choose to develop design ambitions within a business context, through a unit delivered by the Manchester Metropolitan Business School, which cultivates project planning and management skills, raises understanding of markets and marketing opportunities, and highlights the financial factors and concerns that impact on production design decisions within a commercial manufacturing environment.
Features
Graduates will develop theoretical and practical skills suitable for roles in; design consultancy; design for engineering and manufacturing; design management; and design research for industry or academic research and teaching. The programme will also prepare graduates who wish to go on to self-employment, establishing and running their own design/manufacturing businesses.
New York City boasts the country’s largest number of creative-sector jobs and attracts top design talent. Local industry events and collaborations with commercial and nonprofit partners deepen connections to the field. In the MFA Industrial Design program, students combine advanced making skills with critical inquiry to design for production at all scales, from low volume to high volume, employing methods ranging from desktop manufacturing to systems involving global supply chains. Students develop their knowledge and skills at the university’s state-of-the-art product prototyping and testing facilities.
The MFA Industrial Design curriculum balances competing interests such as economical production and sustainability, consumerism, social and environmental improvement, and global and local production, investigating ways to integrate and reconcile these forces as a whole. In their second semester, MFA students explore limited-run making in New York City, and in the third semester they can investigate large-scale global production through virtual collaborations or study abroad at sites including Parsons Paris. A specialized thesis project offers opportunities to develop designs that advance — or challenge — industrial design theory and practice.
Parsons’ Master of Fine Arts in Industrial Design program offers an innovative two-year, 60-credit full-time graduate curriculum that prepares students to negotiate the seemingly contradictory forces at play in the growing product design industry. Students explore the way goods can be produced in both localized contexts (a “making in place” approach, which relies on regionalized needs and constraints) and globalized contexts (employing design principles focusing on universal needs). Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments includes graduate students in Architecture, Interior Design, and Lighting Design, creating a unique learning community.
This program is part of Parsons' School of Constructed Environments (SCE). Learn about the SCE community and explore our SCE blog to see what students, faculty, and alumni are doing in NYC and around the world.
Find out more information here: http://www.newschool.edu/m/parsons-industrial?utm_source=find_a_masters&utm_medium=hyperlink_listing&utm_campaign=pm_parsons_grad&utm_term=industrial_design
The faculty of design practitioners aims to develop a community of designers committed to improving industry, protecting the environment, and promoting the quality of life. The MFA Industrial Design program attracts motivated, reflective students with experience in product design but also accepts candidates from other design professions and disciplines such as engineering, fine art, management, and anthropology. An innovation-focused university with programs in the social sciences, business and management, media studies, and the performing arts, The New School offers complementary courses that enrich design practice.
Students graduate equipped with the ability to integrate the many considerations involved in product design and to lead as socially aware makers, strategists, and industry specialists. Graduates emerge prepared to design innovative products and lead the industries that produce them as well. Career paths include industrial design, product development, manufacturing, furniture design, humanitarian and service design, toy design, design management, and architectural building systems.
Find out more information here: http://www.newschool.edu/m/parsons-industrial?utm_source=find_a_masters&utm_medium=hyperlink_listing&utm_campaign=pm_parsons_grad&utm_term=industrial_design
This course promotes the investigation and interpretation of interior space, inside and outside of the traditional architectural envelope, whilst considering human occupation, engagement and experience as the catalyst. This may manifest in a variety of outcomes and will allow you to work within your chosen speciality such as building re-use, exhibition or shop design, branding, identities or environmental graphics, performance or set design, temporary installations or ‘event’ design, furniture or artefact design. The specialist workshops provide you with opportunities to explore materiality, fabrication and realisation of your ideas, through technical rigour at a variety of scales whilst studio teaching is underpinned by engagement with industry.
Based in the heart of the School of Art, MA/MFA Design: Interior Design is part of an innovative design network — a community of staff and students exploring design ideas in a discursive, cross-disciplinary studio environment. Critically informed practical designers, the group works experimentally, inspired by new insights and possibilities.
While studying towards a particular qualification at MA/MFA level, students experience their subject in the broader context of contemporary design practice.
Dedicated spaces for the postgraduate community have been developed to enable the postgraduate community to flourish. These spaces, for thinking and practice, are located centrally within the School of Art, allowing easy access to an extensive range of workshops where the combination of traditional and state of the art equipment opens up a world of exciting possibilities.
The MA Design: Interior Design is made up of four units totalling 180 credits.
The programme is designed to help you acclimatise to the challenges of MA level research and practice, enabling you to identify and describe a clear direction for your postgraduate design study.
You will be encouraged to develop design propositions that encompass key design issues and have complexity and ambition, taking full consideration of the relative contextual drivers.
You will also be encouraged and supported to extend your experience in the professional sphere either through a practical project, research context, exchange, work experience, or other negotiated professional set of interactions with an external partner, groups of students and creative industry.
Towards the end of the programme you will undertake a major project to consolidate your past research and practice into fully realised collections, pieces, proposals, business plans, or exhibitions – what ever means is appropriate to the work. You will also have developed a strategy for the continuation of your practice located and contextualised to the profession or discipline.
If you choose to progress to MFA Design: Interior Design award you will study a further two units of 60 credits each.
This route is focussed on the continuation of your practice aligned to the research and selection of appropriate public or professional venues and platforms to disseminate a significant body of work. You will be required to produce work for a public audience in the most relevant and appropriate form along with any implicit publicity and dissemination material.
