Best 35 Masters Programs in Design 2019

In today’s competitive world, business success depends increasingly on the ability to innovate. Business leaders are already recognising the importance of how creative practice and process can improve product and service development and design thinking in shaping business strategy. This course integrates world-class, design-driven innovation, management and research activities through a unique teaching approach. We aim to provide students with up-to-date skills to pursue careers in government, NGOs, environmental and business consultancies and public sector organisations. The course is designed to suit creative individuals with business acumen who recognise the importance of how creative practice and process can improve product and service development. It aims to develop creative design literate engineers, scientists and management postgraduates providing tools and techniques to visualise complex data flows and strategic communication processes. It is suitable for graduates from a variety of disciplines.... [-]

Construct your own unique curriculum using the Art and Design Master's modules on offer.

Benefit from the expertise of our research-active staff, plus specialist tools, workshops, and spaces.

Innovate, reflect and take risks - become a resilient, autonomous, lifelong practitioner and learner.

MRes Art and Design is a natural first step towards a PhD, and can also be your route to creating a new product or body of work for the marketplace.

You'll have the opportunity to develop your bold ideas - from commercial products to fine art exhibitions - while earning a postgraduate degree.... [-]

This intensive yet flexible 60-credit program offers advanced art students the opportunity to further their creative development and pursue a graduate degree in a two- or three-year plan of study. Within the M.F.A. in Fine Arts and Design degree program, students select a concentration in painting, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography or computer graphics and are mentored by student-selected faculty teams.

In addition to taking courses in art history and aesthetics, students work closely with faculty to prepare a thesis project in their area of concentration. Through "Seminars in Contemporary Issues," current exhibitions, artists' writings, theory and criticism, students and faculty make full use of the University's unique position near the vast resources of New York City's museums, galleries, and alternative spaces.... [-]

The Visual Communication Institute HGK FHNW, in Basel offers internationally accredited curricula on the Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. level reflecting the rich tradition of the Basel School of Design in particular and Swiss Graphic Design in general.

The City of Basel, located in the tri-national Rhine river valley, is a unique cultural environment with easy access to France and Germany.

While our Bachelor course focuses on the students’ ability to conduct a creative process, our Master programs strive to extend the students’ individual design vocabulary and to reach a higher level of reflection through the students’ ability to include knowledge and methodologies of scientific disciplines into the creative process. We offer a Master of Arts in Visual Communication and Iconic Research and an International Master of Design, which we conduct in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago.... [-]

By tackling the unknown for business our students acquire the skills to learn from people, find patterns, use design principles, and turn ideas into tangible objects and devices. They learn to work in teams, to be user-focused and optimistic. Students are not only trained to work in a purely creative environment. The skills they learn enable them to think outside the box and solve problems for diverse groups and industries.

Design thinking employs a variety of different methods and approaches: from creative industries to finding solutions to existing problems and challenges while keeping business purposes in mind.... [-]

Study at the World's number one ranked art and design university for five consecutive years (2015-2019) in the QS World University Subject Rankings.

MRes RCA degrees are offered in four Schools (Communication, Design, Fine Art and Humanities) and are designed to provide early-career researchers with the intellectual, technical and professional tools with which to complete high-quality research projects, whether at doctoral level or within the cultural and creative industries, working across traditional sociocultural, disciplinary and sectoral boundaries.

MRes RCA programmes are delivered through a combination of: structured learning, comprising of lectures and master-classes by practitioners and senior academics; workshop classes based around a set task (a ‘brief’); tutor-led seminar classes where students will be asked to reflect on material that they have read or studied in advance; and project assignments that support the structured teaching programme. Students are taught by highly regarded and active practitioners who are also academically qualified to provide a critical context for their work.... [-]

The Master of Architecture (Design) is a program of independent, supervised research leading to the presentation of an exhibition of architectural design equivalent in scope to the schematic design of a building of major cultural significance.

Starting dates

Weekly contact time

The master of fine arts (M.F.A.) in design is a two-year graduate program that engages students in collaborative practice within a dynamic, multidisciplinary studio environment. This professional graduate program breaks down boundaries and brings together students, faculty, communities, and businesses to work collaboratively on the world's significant problems for the greater good.

Graduate students in design interact with the School of Design's inquisitive and intelligent community. Students and faculty throughout the school address first hand the issues of the world around them, with focus on sustainable design practices, social issues, and excellence in professional practice forming the core of the programs.... [-]

The study program Master in Design It is enhancing the scientific and professional autonomy of the student, focusing on knowledge and skills strongly grounded in the exploration of design methods and scientific research. This program combines new paradigms of social design, entrepreneurship, biomimetics and ecology, covering potentially either side of Product Design wants to shed design Editorial, depending on the specific training interest of the student.

The Masters in Design will be able to integrate research and technological development teams (R & D) in the design process with industry, workshops and services; integrating scientific research teams in the areas of Product Design or Communication Design as well as in related fields; qualify for access to other branches of postgraduate training at the level of the 3rd cycle, or functions that may require a higher education, including the teaching of different levels.... [-]

1. Study programme title:

Innovation-based Integrated Design

2. The number of available places:

20 places

3. Short description

Unlike traditional design, integrated design is not a one-sided and unidisciplinary justifiable action, but in order to generate a durable and sustainable design solution, it uses a holistic, three-way assessment. Thus, in order to be accepted and implemented in practice, the design solution must be "sound" - according to the "ecologically necessary versus technologically possible" binomial - from the ecological point of view, be fair, equitable and timely, from the point of view of ethical, social and economic view, as it must be designed to meet a certain utilitarian function, and to aesthetically enrich and signify a product, a space, a service, or an individual.... [-]

The importance of typography in design is evident. It can not be designed without typography, but it can be designed only with typography. Typography surrounds us and accompanies us 24 hours a day. It is ubiquitous and inescapable and visually interprets what is happening around us. In the current design landscape, typography has gone from transparency to occupy a leading role and have its own expression.

In essence, the objective of typography (both in its design and in its application) has always remained the same: to try to communicate in an attractive way any text, regardless of its level of reading. It is evident that the same typography should not be used to read a book to effectively signal an airport, but it is clear that the objective is always exactly the same; that the receiver understands the message as clearly as possible.... [-]

The Master in Design for Emergent Futures (MDEF) is organised by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, in collaboration with the Fab Academy.

The Master is a nine-month experience (currently, the second year is being developed) for students who want to expand their focus interests and acquire the skills to turn protests into prototypes, ideas into actions, and who are engaged in the mission of transforming the current status of affairs in society. The program is structured in four critical steps: Exploration, Instrumentation, Reflection and Application. Through these four steps, the master aims to provide strategic vision and tools for designers, sociologists, economists and computer scientists, to become agents of change in multiple professional environments. The program focus is in the design of interventions in the form of products, platforms and deployments that aim to produce new emergent futures, by previously analysing the current challenges in society and industry.... [-]

Objects that ‘behave’ and ‘communicate’ have rapidly moved from the realm of science fiction to our homes, shelves, and pockets. Products are no longer static but are expected to interact, inform and guide. In a similar vein, data is now available in quantities larger than was imagined in the recent past. Patterns have to be seen and conveyed, often interactively in real-time.

We facilitate design and art professionals of the future, who can work in multiple contexts, make complex connections, lead and manage change. We facilitate and inculcate working with autonomy towards a clear self-position, be it as an entrepreneur, a design lead or as an independent creative practitioner.... [-]

With this program you will learn to visualize creative and convincing ideas, as well as understand who you are addressing, the medium in which you communicate the message, and the emotional load that this message must guarantee.

The Art Direction, as an essential part of any commercial communication action, is in constant transformation. The evolution of the media, technology and social networks make it increasingly complex to determine the limits of this discipline.

This new environment can confuse the priorities when it comes to becoming a good Director of Art. It is not so much about being the latest in trends or technology, but rather the opposite. From this Master we want to claim why it is so important to know how to tell an idea at a visual level. Why it is basic to understand that behind any communication action there is an intention to influence, excite or convince someone concrete. Why an Art Director can become overshadowed by the superfluous and completely ignore the ultimate purpose of all his work.... [-]