Why you should study this course
This postgraduate course has been designed in collaboration with industry praticioners and prepares you to manage creative design practice, practitioners and processes in a corporate context across a broad range of creative and manufacturing industries. Potential professional roles could include design manager, creative producer and account manager.
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You may have opportunities to work with professionals from the creative design industry to develop your expertise in various user contexts and professional settings – from graphic, fashion and communication design to consumer and industrial product design.
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The curriculum embraces business management, marketing, design strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainability, design leadership and design practice. It seeks to develop your knowledge of management processes, including project management, milestone reporting, decision-making and budget management, as well as core business practice in areas like intellectual property and finance.
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Upon successful completion of this course, you should have the technical knowledge needed to function effectively in the professional environments in which design is applied, leading creative designers and cross-functional teams who take new products from initial concept to final outputs. Our facilities4 enable you to familiarise yourself with industry-standard software and equipment used in the design industry.
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Inspired by staff who will share their experience of design with companies including Philips, Canon and Samsung (staff may be subject to change), you will have the opportunity to work on briefs set by industry teams who will then comment and advise on your work. This should help build your confidence to communicate and defend ideas and outcomes throughout all phases of the design process – to stakeholders including managers, marketers, engineers, facilitators and production managers.
What you'll study
Managing creatives and the creative process in collaboration with other functional teams requires a broad skillset, including technical know-how and leadership characteristics.
Established techniques of leadership and management will be taught alongside access to the Faculty’s wide range of creative activities. Creative practitioners are increasingly being regarded as multi-disciplinary within the design industry. The course focuses on challenges and creative culture, as well as a deeper understanding of design processes, evaluation and expectations.
This course explores a mix of creative design, management and leadership processes to equip you with the skills and expertise that could be used to lead effective creative design which may have commercial value within industrial, retail or service sectors. It is structured around the three themes of communication, collaboration and creativity.
During semester 1, we’ll explore creative processes and contexts and provide a theoretical and practical introduction to academic standards of research and ethics which are core to level 7 study. In Semester 2, students will critically develop their specialist practice/interests and start to question where personal boundaries and creative activities. Students will work closely with peers and consider their own practice in a professional context. During Semester 3 students will work on their self-directed specialist Final Project.
Modules
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Collaboration in Practice - 30 credits
You will have the opportunity to work with students across the postgraduate disciplines within the School of Art and Design and internationally, to enable you to develop a broader understanding of the context for your practice, encouraging you to dynamically engage with external partners and apply your ideas in ‘real world contexts'.
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Design Management Specialism 1 - 30 credits
You will explore the global, economic, cultural and social context in which design management works. You will be equipped with key market research skills and tools of strategic analysis in order to be able to develop commercial competitiveness within organisations. You'll develop an awareness of the role of different commercial functions, such as marketing and corporate social responsibility, and learn how to synthesise this knowledge to work as an effective leader in the creative industries.
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Professional Context - 20 credits
This module asks you to consider the professional contexts of your discipline. It explores the ways in which creativity, innovation, problem-solving and entrepreneurship intersect in creative practice. It employs real-world examples to enable you to think about professional practice, employability, portfolio development and approaches to communication.
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Design Management Specialism 2 - 30 credits
The module prepares students for careers either as a freelance creative or in multi-national corporations. You will develop an awareness of project management within the creative industries, explore the function of different teams and learn to appraise differing stakeholder perspectives.
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Transnational Professional Development - 10 credits
This module requires you to select a series of topics related to intercultural and transnational communication, professional development and management/leadership to provide you with both a theoretical and practical framework to help build key skills.
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Design Management Specialist Investigation - 30 credits
This module requires you to implement the first part of the plan defined in the module 'Design Management Final Project’. The outcome will be a personal project brief or initial creative directions inspired by the data, discourse or analysis. The output of this module can be presented in a negotiated form that has equivalency to a 3,500 word investigatory or exploratory report.
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Design Management Final Project - 30 credits
The module requires you to independently plan, develop and apply strategies of data gathering, data analysis and data interpretation. You will produce an extended and original collection of work relating to your own aspirations (e.g. responding to service design, product design, design engineering, entrepreneurship). You will apply skills and knowledge of tools and strategies to provide a creative design management response to the business decisions, brands, organisation, strategies and innovative approaches to design success.
How you'll learn
Your learning journey will be wide ranging, developing your work to have integrity, resilience and be authentic in its production and delivery. The learning that you will undertake will include sessions that are led by staff, group projects, guided learning and directed skill sessions.
This course can be studied on a full-time or part-time basis. Whilst we would like to give you all the information about our part-time offering here, it is tailored for each course each year depending on the number of part-time applicants. Therefore, the part-time teaching arrangements vary.
