Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.
Science and theory are boring? Quite the contrary – they can be as exciting as a murder mystery!
Good design requires reflection and discussion during the design process in order to create use-oriented concepts and products.
It requires you to work like a detective – to investigate. This is made possible for our students by the ability to deal phenomenologically and analytically with the spectrum of design topics and by the application of design research methods. Then you have to think creatively, like a profiler, to be able to design for your future users: Think out of the box, find inspiration and develop ideas. Designing with scientific know-how. In order to be able to put the whole thing into a real-world context, students are also taught the economic dimension of design, such as buying behaviour and market strategies, as well as the historical and ethical dimensions of design.
Good design is based on what has been learned. This means that students must be taught competent theoretical knowledge in addition to practical skills.
In Middle High German, the word “design” was already used in the sense of intellectual design, i.e. design competence develops on a theoretical basis. As a result, theory and practice form an interrelated unit at the Faculty of Design. This means that the students are taught the modules "Design and Cultural History", "Design Science", "Markets and Management", as well as the basics of scientific work, the theoretical basics of advertising design, branding design, colour design, lighting design, product design, interior design, time-based media and interaction design in a practical way.
This offer not only gives students a view of the past, but also of the present and the future. This will enable them to shape the future for the coming decades.
“Science and Theory” team: Prof. Dr. Sabine Foraita, Verw. Prof. Holger Fricke, Dipl. Des. Bianka Grottendieck, Prof. Dr. Alexander Schimansky, Prof. Dr. Stephan Schwingeler
Meaningfulness and quality
Odo Marquardt's saying “The future needs the past” is as true today as it was when he said it, which is why a well-founded range of courses in art and cultural history, design history and design sciences enables students to intensively examine our cultural context.
By applying these comprehensive theoretical principles, our students not only learn good design, but also how to explain it. This not only enables them to present convincing arguments to their clients, but above all encourages them to question their own design in terms of its meaningfulness and quality.
The theoretical subjects also help the students to build up their own “design canon”, whose creative recipes they can fall back on again and again.
