5x Master's programs at Design Academy Eindhoven
With a master's degree from Design Academy Eindhoven, you learn to investigate and analyze complex situations. In two years, you will reflect on your role as a designer and the possibilities and limits of the profession. Of course, you can design your own program within this framework. That starts with choosing one of the master’s departments. We have listed all five for you.
Would you like to know if Design Academy Eindhoven is right for you? On 11 January, there's a Talk&Tour, where you can learn about the study program online. There are also several Meet the Masters gatherings each year. The next one is on 28 January.
Contextual Design
As a designer, you are always working within multiple contexts simultaneously. The spatial, social or historical setting, or the broader social and ecological conditions. Within Contextual Design, the starting point is understanding of that context. Then you can decipher it and deconstruct it to eventually design and build a new context. For example, in the form of objects, spaces or relations. During this course, the central question you will continually ask yourself: 'What kind of world do I want to live in, and what role can my design play in this larger ideal?'
Department head: Afaina de Jong
Social Design
Design thinking can play an essential role in dealing with the issues of today. In this graduate program, the social element of design is central. Not as a given but as a concept that needs continuous redefinition. What do we understand by 'social'? Is it really only about humans? And what makes a design social? The role of designers is also questioned. The overconfidence with which this discipline 'solves problems' will be further examined. Design itself is often part of the problem it claims to solve. But ultimately, the Master in Social Design is an optimistic one. Together with lecturers and fellow students, you rethink what society is and could be.
Department head: Marina Otero Verzier
Information Design
With each new technology, the landscape of design is transforming. For example, digital technology has dramatically changed the role of graphic designers. Technology has also opened up the field of creation itself. It allows designers to create their own design tools and thus expand the notion of a product. Designing information is a multidisciplinary endeavor, and therefore, students of this master's program have different backgrounds, such as designers, scientists, journalists, or design managers. The two-year program is built around three core concepts: technology, critical reflection and communication.
Department head: Joost Grootens
Critical Inquiry Lab
This master’s program encourages students to take a curious stance on design in relation to historically grown constructions and how they resonate in the context of local and global communities. How do visible and invisible systems manifest themselves in society through laws, technologies, ethics and power relations? Careful questioning and embodied understanding are crucial to enable (design) contributions to a more equitable and inclusive future.
Department head: Saskia van Stein
GEO-DESIGN
Are you interested in the social, economic and geopolitical forces that shape contemporary design? The GEO-DESIGN department recognizes the legacy of industrial production as a source for the designer's expertise and agency in modern society. And simultaneously addresses its historic contribution to environmental and social instability, and its incompatibility with models of a sustainable future. Within this master’s program, you will learn to combine hands-on material techniques with innovative media formats, transparent collaboration with tactical subversion and historical philosophy with urgent critical discourse.
Department head: Formafantasma - Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi
