Category: Design education
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Designing in partnership
This blog was co-authored by Abbie Jackson, Anna Ward-Stancheva, Georgy Holden, Leo Rees-Evans, Mar Reyes, Nicole Lotz and Rebekah Manston, all Design and Innovation students at the Open University. On June 25th 2020, the third annual exhibition of work of OU design students was launched. Every year, we invite students to design the exhibition together […]
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Using remote and onscreen laboratories in online learning
As many Universities need to quickly move their learning online during the current coronavirus crisis, we have received many questions about our remote and virtual laboratories. This blog collects together useful information about our OpenSTEM Labs and provides links to online resources. This blog is a working document and was last updated on 20th November […]
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Editorial: Ed Tech defining design curriculum
(This is a cross post fromthe #DistanceDesignEd blog: http://distancedesigneducation.com) If you’d asked me ‘What drives your design curriculum?’ a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have said Zoom… I’ll shortly have to add a whole list of other technologies, services and ed-tech that are emerging as “class leaders” (That was a satirical pun, by the way). […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]