Job profiles of designers around the globe are changing with dramatic speed and educational institutions have to keep track with these changes.

How should design education be structured in a way that design graduates can work effectively in the future? To what extent is the current training still applicable – or does it need to go in a completely new direction? If a new type of design college was founded tomorrow, which could fully draw on new sources of inspiration without being restricted by any consideration for old structures – what content and methods would be taught there?

I am honoured to have been invited as one of 24 selected experts from Africa and India by the iF Design Foundation to a two-day conference to discuss some of these questions and future of design education.

A catalogue of 80 widely diverse questions based on an international study by the iF Design Foundation serves as an inspiration and guideline for the conferences which have been developed by Prof. Dr René Spitz, Professor of Design Science and Communication Management at the Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln (RFH). At the end of 2020, the findings of all the international conferences and a final conference will be summarised and published in a White Paper, to be edited in 2021.

More information on the Johannesburg event and the history of the iF Design Foundation’s exploration of design education can be found on René’s personal website here.