Master’s Degree
Programme

 

 

Facts

Duration of studies
4 semesters / 120 ECTS
Place
Design School Kolding
Application deadline
1 March
Entrance examination
No
Semester start
September
Tuition fee
€ 14,000 per study year for non-EU citizens

Master's Degree in Design

On Design School Kolding's Master's degree programme, you will use your design skills within aesthetics and function to reframe relevant challenges and create meaningful and emotional design solutions. The goal is to design new ways for people to interact as well as produce, consume and act.

We build on the Danish, democratic design tradition. In collaboration with the outside world, it is our ambition to create sustainable and inclusive solutions with play and creativity as leverage.

With that objective in mind, you will gain a deep and extended understanding of design methods, techniques and theory and thus supplement the knowledge as well as the competences and skills you bring with you from your bachelor's degree.

The education is structured as a cross between the design skills you have acquired on your relevant bachelor's degree (subject area), which is further developed in a thematic context (focus area) that you develop within.

Based on your subject area
In the Master's programme, you take the expertise from your bachelor's degree as your starting point. We work based on the following 5 subject areas:

  • Accessory Design
  • Communication Design
  • Fashion Design
  • Industrial Design
  • Textile Design

In your application you must choose the subject area in which you wish to advance and develop your design projects, as you will receive professional sparring, guidance and be challenged on your practical skills within that specific subject area.

Choice of focus area
Along with your choice of subject area, we ask you to choose between 3 thematic focus areas:

  • Social design (Design for People)
  • Sustainability and design (Design for Planet)
  • Play and design (Design for Play)

The focus areas are a unique opportunity to link and develop your subject area and your learning to topics and industries that you are passionate about and see yourself contributing to in the future.

Please find more info about the focus areas further down on the page.

Practice and relevance
The Master's programme prioritizes collaboration with the private and public sector as well as individual subjects based on concrete cases. Both collaborations and subjects focus on practice and relevance.

In your daily life, you will work with tools, techniques, concepts and methods in an appreciative, international and interdisciplinary environment with skilled and dedicated teachers and easy access to workshop facilities.

Your title
The Master's programme ends with an exam project, and you are awarded the title MA of Arts.

On your diploma, we will also indicate your special combination of subject area and focus area, e.g. Communication Design for Play, Textile Design for People or Industrial Design for Planet.

Focus areas

Design for People

Design for People is based on people's needs and behaviour. You will learn design theory, processes and methods that enable you to develop solutions that address human, social and societal challenges. As a student, you must have a social and societal awareness as well as the desire, will and courage to familiarize yourself with different user types.

Read more

Design for Planet

Design for the Planet addresses one of today's most important challenges, namely creating a more sustainable world. We deal both directly and indirectly with the UN's 17 global goals. As a student, you must want to work with sustainable agendas and have a strong foundation in design, as well as be professionally courageous and curious.

Read more

Design for Play

Design for Play introduces you to play as a motivating factor in design and development processes with a view of creating better solutions and meaningful products, services and systems. As a student, you must like to walk new paths and challenge yourself and others through playful experiences. You will be a frontrunner for new ways of designing in a society and labour market that calls for creativity and innovation.

Read more

Find the subject area for you

On the Master's programme, you build on the expertise you have from your bachelor's degree and develop it further.

You do this in the form of practical upskilling based on the highest standard within your field of expertise. But also in the form of project work, where you are challenged to develop the field's methods and techniques by working with issues within your focus area. In other words, the Master's programme sharpens your awareness of relevance and context, while at the same time developing your skills in design.

Through the education, you get to influence how you want to develop your professional skills and specialise in that which you are passionate about. You receive continuous guidance from professional experts who want to meet you exactly where you are in your design process.

At the beginning of your studies, you will receive a specialised course over five weeks in design practice and prototypes within your subject area, so that you can develop your design at a high aesthetic and functional level. It is essential that you are equipped to put your design solutions in a relevant context with a high degree of finish and high fidelity.

During the course, you will be offered various workshop and technology-driven masterclasses.

Before you hand in your Master's project at the end of the programme, which must be carried out in collaboration with an external partner, you will do an internship and test your skills and competences.

The five subject areas
At Design School Kolding we can support professional development within the following five subject areas:

  • Accessory Design
  • Fashion Design
  • Industrial Design
  • Communication Design
  • Textile Design

In your application you must choose the subject area in which you wish to develop and advance your design projects, as you will receive professional sparring, guidance and be challenged on your practical skills within that specific subject area.

This means that if, for example, you have a bachelor's degree in Textile Design and want to continue developing yourself professionally in this field, you must choose Textile Design. If, on the other hand, you want to move from the Textile Design to the field of Communication Design, you must choose Communication Design. Whether you are accepted to the programme will depend on the quality of your portfolio in relation to the subject area in question.

If you come with a bachelor's degree that covers several of our subject areas, you must choose the area in which you want to improve your skills.

Subject areas

Accessory design

In Accessory Design you can come up with design projects as diverse as jewellery, shoes and bags. The education is at the crossroads between Industrial Design and Fashion Design. What the product groups have in common is that they are characterised by being decorative and functional objects that we wear on the body. You will therefore work with the design of objects in the interplay between identity and product.

Read more about Accessory Design at Design School Kolding

Fashion Design

Fashion Design is for you who are fascinated by clothing and fashion – regardless of whether you are interested in aesthetics, function or how clothes reflect identity and contemporary times. Through prototypes that you prepare analoguely and digitally, you sharpen your choice of material, colours, composition, proportion and solutions and develop your design skills. 

Read more about Fashion Design at Design School Kolding

Communication Design

In Communication Design you must sharpen your ability to design communication and create messages that fulfill a precise objective. You work to create strong, visual narratives that touch people emotionally and engage them in your messages. You don't just do it with the aim of creating something that is beautiful and aesthetic - it's also about influencing people to take an action or change behaviour. 

Read more about Communication Design at Design School Kolding

Subject areas

Industrial design

Industrial Design covers a wide group of design products from shavers to groundwater pumps to drone mailboxes that collect letters and packages themselves. Common to the entire subject area is that you will work in the interplay between aesthetic design, functional aspects, production technical possibilities and human considerations. You must develop concepts and products that are based on visionary notions of the future that your design must help to create. 

Read more about Industrial Design at Design School Kolding

Textile Design

In Textile Design you shape materials and surfaces that we have close to the body. It is therefore important that you understand your user and the context in which the material is to be used and the emotional potential that the textiles contain. As a textile designer, you are passionate about understanding and challenging today's systems, production methods and usage practices, in order to create something new and better in the future.

Read more about Textile Design at Design School Kolding

Optagelse

The Master's programme for you

Design School Kolding's Master's programme is for you who:

  • want to have an influence on your own education and feel that you do
  • can apply your knowledge and practice as well as develop and advance your design professional level from the BA programme
  • likes to explore and has room for wonder
  • is a knowledge resource and may want to be involved in artistic development work
  • has deep knowledge and professionalism and at the same time manages to be pragmatic and thereby create change
  • would like to become aware of your own professional identity as a designer in order to contribute to the profession and to the world

Business collaborations

Design School Kolding wants the business community, public institutions, and others to realise the creative and innovative potential that a collaboration with a designer holds. At the same time, we want to prepare you for the job market. Therefore, collaborations with companies and other external partners represent a cornerstone of the teaching, and you will easily find yourself working with real cases together with Danish and international organisations. This allows you, even as a student, to work in specific contexts and with design that has a meaningful purpose, and makes the transition to the job market and exciting international settings much easier.
The Programme concludes with a Master project in collaboration with a private or public company or organisation of your choice.

Career opportunities

Design processes and design methodology can make a difference in all areas of society, so with a design degree a world of opportunities awaits you. Depending on your speciality, you can choose to work with e.g. fashion, jewellery, shoes, interior or different types of visual communication, and perhaps you will be able to get a job with some of Design School Kolding’s regular collaboration partners. In addition, your training gives you a variety of general competences that can also get you a job in areas that you do not usually associate with design, for instance health care, local government, etc.

Hvad kan jeg blive?

Master's programme in Design Management

The University of Southern Denmark offers a Master’s Programme in Design Management in collaboration with Design School Kolding.

Kandidat i designledelse

Contact

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