A video recording of the talk The White Book – Designing Design Education.
How must design studies be set up, if the aim is to not only keep pace with changes in business and society, but to design these changes? The reference work Designing Design Education. White Book on the Future of Design Education documents findings from five years of academic research. It is based on an interdisciplinary exchange with more than 250 experts from 25 countries. The aim of this publication is to provide a substantial foundation for the discourse on necessary changes and to stimulate concrete implementation.
During Berlin Design Week 2021, the author of the book, René Spitz, spoke with Fritz Frenkler, who published the White Book together with Christoph Böninger and Susanne Schmidhuber. The approximately one-hour video recording of the talk can now be watched here to see online.
What might design education – in Germany, Europe, and worldwide – look like in five, ten, or fifteen years? To what extent must it adapt to different design needs in different countries and cultures? Doesn’t design finally have to abandon the idea that it is primarily about making products more attractive and thus more marketable? Doesn’t design rather have the task and the responsibility to sense and formulate changes in society – and to put people at the center? Isn’t it fatal to see the designer primarily as the ‘drawing pen’ of marketing, and design exclusively as a tool of production? Is this misconceived professional image of the designer reflected in inadequate or outdated education programs? How could, or should, the subject of design education be reconceived – from the present into the future, with the inclusion of the most diverse academic disciplines?
