Global Innovation Design (GID) is a joint Master's programme between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. It is a unique, transnational Master’s design initiative that brings together three major centres of design, culture, enterprise and industry: Europe, North America and Asia.
GID is a multidisciplinary, multicultural and multinational design programme awarding both an MA from the Royal College of Art and an MSc from Imperial College London to graduates. GID offers an engaging global curriculum and provides powerful cultural experiences crafted to nurture innovators and designers who are prepared to take on the changing needs of enterprise in the twenty-first century.
GID international partners include Pratt Institute (New York), Keio University (Tokyo), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and Tsinghua University (Beijing). Each of these distinctive institutions brings unique expertise and complementary approaches to design, engineering, business and cultural sensitivity, within the context of internationally oriented design innovation.
The GID vision is to foster a transformative postgraduate experience that is unparalleled in the world, one that cultivates internationally oriented innovation and design leaders who can tackle complex problems and deliver positive social, environmental, economic and cultural change.
The GID ethos is to cultivate activated people, designers and leaders who are capable of making change in the world. Designers on the Global Innovation Design Master's programme will be expected to generate creative directions that other designers and innovators will follow.
The programme is full time and runs over a period of two calendar years. GID Master's candidates on the joint RCA/Imperial College programme begin their course in London for two terms developing their visions and a body of work which will be thematically and regionally developed throughout the next year and a half.
They have the opportunity to study on the New York/Tokyo route or the Beijing/Singapore route during their first and second years. They then return to London for the final two terms of their graduation year. Graduates from the programme are expected to be central to innovation leadership in the twenty-first century.
Philosophically, GID challenges designers to ask who they are and what is most important to them; as authors of material culture they are asked what kind of world do they wish to create, and what contributions will they make. Global Innovation Designers create transformational culture. At the centre of the programme is the knowledge that transformational culture is engendered by objects and experiences that are the embodiment of the robustly beautiful and the exquisitely functional combined.
The GID Master's programme offers:
Study on the Tokyo/New York route route gives access to Keio University, well known for physical computing and social design interventions, as well as Pratt Institute, renowned for a tradition of excellence in industrial design.
Study on the Beijing/Singapore route gives access to Tsinghua University, China's number one institution with world class design labs and studios, as well as Nanyang Technical University's School of Art, Design, and Media whose cutting edge programmes in new media and cultural and social design innovation situate it as a leader in emerging Asian and Global design.
At Tsinghua University, London-based students will benefit from studying at the top University in China, gaining first-hand experience of the culture of China and designing with both new and traditional materials in the context of emerging Asian design.
At Nanyang Technical University, London-based students will be exposed to a rich and varied Pan-Asian community. NTU offers world-class communication and video production instruction with cultural understanding at the core. NTU is expert in the practice of “value transmigration”, how to translate a culturally specific artefact into a viable product-service-system in a new cultural context.
