Category: Design education

  • 50 Things And More That Made Today’s World

    50 Things And More That Made Today’s World

    Like Dr Seuss’ metaphorical ‘The Cat in the Hat’ BBC Radio 4 opens the box to release ” 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy“. The “Things” did not stop at 50 but kept coming throughout the first and second series. “These things will not bite you” said “The Cat in the Hat”, but are […]

  • A strange collection of objects or ground-breaking inclusive design?

    A strange collection of objects or ground-breaking inclusive design?

    Helen Hamlyn (2019) design innovation awards What are these objects? How can we use them? Are they modern or vintage? Answers on a postcard please… #HH@theRCA Helen Hamlyn (HH)Trust has been breaking new boundaries in inclusive design since 1991 and became fully founded in 1999. The Helen Hamlyn centre is the largest centre for design […]

  • Museum of Brands

    Museum of Brands

    We followed a recommendation from an OU tutor, Richard Coles (T317), who has been working as a packaging designer for a long while. Under his guidance, a group of students from the Design and Innovation qualification and other qualifications visited the Museum of Brands in London. We were delighted that Robert Opie, the Founder of […]

  • Children’s design capacity

    Children’s design capacity

    Every year, our first-year students develop a board game for one of their design projects. I love looking at the responses to the brief because the assignment gives scope to show systemic as well as detail thinking. The students’ board game proposals curate an elaborate ensemble of the game track, action cards and playing pieces […]

  • A swiss excursion in minimal design

    A swiss excursion in minimal design

      Visited a couple of Swiss buildings recently which motivated some thoughts on minimal Design.  Corbusier designed a lovely lakeside ‘Petite Maison’ for his parents near Vevey, Switzerland. It was built in 1923, to minimal principles (although its appearance is complexified by later cladding).  The architectural composition is linear along the lake shore with views to the […]

  • Designing the 2019 Design Qualification student exhibition

    Designing the 2019 Design Qualification student exhibition

    For the second year running, the Design and Innovation Qualification team organised an exhibition of students’ work across its 3 core design modules U101, T217/T218 and T317. The exhibition was designed by 3 student designers: Rukhsana Ali (U101), Patrice Belton (U101) and Kristina Valenkova (T317) and one professional exhibition designer: Dawn Correa (also tutoring U101 […]

  • Bauhaus 100

    Bauhaus 100

    The Bauhaus –one of the world’s most influential art and design schools – was established by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 1919 and this year the centenary of its foundation is being celebrated in Germany and many other countries. Beginning in Weimar, relocated to Dessau in 1925 and closed in Berlin under pressure from […]

  • Taste some Raspberry Pi? Yes please!

    Taste some Raspberry Pi? Yes please!

    Raspberry Pis are a key smart technology at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT) and are central to the design of our future smart cities. At the Open University, there is interest in the way smart technologies can help build and manage the world we live in, and in their role in helping […]

  • Co-designing a Makerspace with the La Campagna-Altamira Community in Mexico

    Co-designing a Makerspace with the La Campagna-Altamira Community in Mexico

    I am just back from Monterrey in the north of Mexico, and can’t wait to share what I have done there. I worked on co-creating a Makerspace with La Campana-Altamira, an impoverished and marginalised community in the otherwise comparably wealthy city of Monterrey. Since the former Mexican president Calderon declared the Drug War, this low-income […]

  • Innovating Pedagogy – Virtual Studios

    Innovating Pedagogy – Virtual Studios

    The Innovating Pedagogy report for 2019 has just been published by The Open University (IET) in conjunction with the Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen, Norway. The Design Group have one of the sections on Virtual Studios (Section 7!) So I thought I’d share a couple of the stranger […]