MASTER DEPARTMENTS DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN

Designers, curators and theorists work in a world in flux. They are faced with complex themes that cannot be reduced to readily solvable design problems. More and more they will be crossing the boundaries of their disciplines, while the themes they work on deserve the critical view of well-informed creative minds. The Master course at Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) offers students the tools needed to research and analyse complex situations, and develop personal views on possible interventions. DAE’s MA students learn to improve their individual design processes and thinking and to set up essential (multidisciplinary) collaborations with others.

The minimum requirement for new Master students is a completed course at Bachelor level in design, design history, curatorial studies or with a proven affinity with an equivalent discipline, such as the humanities, architecture, art, or art history. The Master course is intended to reinforce the authorship of the designer or design theorist. Students strengthen and focus their positions; they learn to reflect on the profession, its range and its limits; they develop their personal imagery and signature and research topical questions to come up with valid design, presentation or text proposals. The cultural context in which designers and their products ‘function’ is the guiding principle, though the research domains may also be socially, technically, scientifically or economically oriented.

PROGRAMMESThe Master programmes at Design Academy Eindhoven consist of four departments: Contextual Design, Social Design, Information Design and Design Curating and Writing. The two-year curricula are set up around research and design assignments from our design and workshop tutors and the writing and thesis supervisors of the four departments, and lectures and workshops given by guest lecturers. During their second year, students work on individual research themes, which they formulate themselves. To help students formulate topical research themes the Master departments cooperate with external institutions, governments, companies, and leading experts as well as with the researchers of the DAE Readerships.

Apart from tutorials within each department, the departments also organize lectures by visiting critics and guests, theoretical sessions, workshops and discussion events. Many of these events are open to all master students.

MA IN DESIGN — THEN WHAT?The positions our MA graduates acquire are diverse, as there are many options for designers and design theorists with a broad interest in autonomous thinking, concept development, research, interdisciplinary cooperation, curating and teaching.

INFORMATION DESIGNThe information age empowers individuals to understand, explore and shape their surroundings in a way that is unprecedented in terms of speed and scale. Despite all the new tools and technologies the world seems more complicated than ever. It is in need of new ideas, methods and personalities to map the data describing our individual and collective patterns of behaviour, transactions and thoughts, and boiling these down to their essence. Not only by making information attractive, but first and foremost by turning it into effective narratives.

Department head: Joost Grootens[www.masterinformationdesign.info]

CONTEXTUAL DESIGN What is design? What is functionality? These questions are at the heart of the Contextual Design department, as we consider education a continuous questioning of the discipline — a continuous search for re-definitions. As Contextual Design intends to educate tomorrow’s ‘author designers’, the programme focuses first of all on coming to an attitude in design and the skills needed to develop a personal vision and a distinctive way of working. We take product design as a starting point, but within this area we are open to unconventional approaches and surprising outcomes. The artistic process leads the way.

Department head: Louise Schouwenberg[www.mastercontextualdesign.info]

SOCIAL DESIGN“There is no such thing as social design!” As a designer you are obliged to work with the social aspect. You must continuously ask yourself: why do I design? What impact will my design have? Who will it affect? What do I achieve with my body of work? This critical attitude is what defines our department as Social Design.

Department head: Jan Boelen[www.mastersocialdesign.info]

DESIGN CURATING & WRITINGAs design dematerializes and disperses into the interfaces, systems and social interactions that shape our daily lives, new kinds of exhibition-making and writing are needed to make sense of its unfamiliar — and even invisible — contours. In the Master’s programme in Design Curating and Writing, students develop new tools and approaches for understanding and interpreting the far-reaching implications of contemporary design. Drawing on theory, archival research, reporting, and critical analysis, students develop personal points of view and experiment with their articulation in the multiple formats of twenty-first century curating and writing.

Department head: Alice Twemlow[www.masterdesigncuratingwriting.info]

For more information check our website: designacademy.nl/masters or contact the general MA coordinators via masters@designacademy.nl So

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designacademy.nl/masters

Design AcademyEindhoven

Master ProgrammesContextual DesignSocial DesignInformation DesignDesign Curatingand Writing