Becoming a Designer - Introductory Workshop

Fondation Classes /Design studies / Introductory Workshop / (3 to 5 days)

This workshop is designed for students still in foundation courses. Its aim is to provide them with a solid grounding in design principles, regardless of whether they pursue careers in product design, architecture, graphic design, or fashion design. It is suitable for Foundation, BA, and MA level students. 

Creative Process for Designers

Bachelor’s degree level / Design studies / Structured Series of Workshops (12 courses) 

structured as 1-hour lecture / 2-hour workshop / creative challenge and mentoring

Designers must be creative whenever the need arises. Creativity isn’t just about generating ideas; it’s about knowing how to engage with the world in order to discover those ideas.

This is a series of twelve courses, structured as short lectures followed by workshops. The aim of these lectures is to educate students about the creative process and how to structure their own approach to creativity. We will study working methods inspired by other disciplines such as performing arts, literature, fiction films, and other art forms. We will attempt to draw inspiration from them and explore whether their application is feasible for design professions.

The lectures (taking place at the beginning of each session) will explore critical thinking theories and how fields such as sociology, linguistics, poetry, and the practice of fiction writing, among others, could influence the creative process and its final results. 

We will delve into specific questions and paradigms unique to each discipline and see if they can change the way we work in other fields. We will question why designers need to use visual or written language, and how these tools might change design practices. We will explore why multiple conceptual or experimental strategies must be implemented and protected, even within a studio practice. The course will address the challenges of staying creative when working alone, as well as how to structure a process when working in small or large teams. Through a series of creative challenges, students will discover what suits their own personalities and learn how to push their limits. The goal is to avoid becoming confined by a “secure” creative process and to encourage the development of a more flexible and dynamic approach to creativity in their future design practice.

In this course, my goal is to explore a wide range of topics that will challenge students' perspectives on design, from the concept of Nonfinito and intertextuality to many others. We’ll dive into the art of designing social behavior rather than simply designing objects or spaces. We’ll discuss the power of suspense as a narrative technique developed by filmmakers, and how this can inspire thinking in architecture, as well as in graphic design, advocating for surprise and freedom when focusing on ergonomics. We’ll also explore the power of the oxymoron and how it can fuel creativity. Students will be asked: Is it possible for a fashion designer to escape the Zeitgeist? Should designers act as a chair or a lamp on stage to understand the full 'biography' of these common objects? Through examples from improv theater exercises, we’ll uncover how engaging with objects can teach empathy and highlight the importance of improvisation as a creative tool

Additionally, we’ll explore strategies for structuring a creative process within a team (drawing inspiration from architect Bernard Tschumi’s work) and how to push students beyond their comfort zones when working solo (Re-acting). By the end of these three-month classes, I hope to influence students’ design processes in unexpected ways—whether they become product designers, graphic designers, or architects.

These lectures and workshops are designed to broaden their creative toolkit and inspire new ways of thinking about design across disciplines.

Here is a glimpse of the content of the lecture that start each 'Design course.' These are designed for first-year Bachelor of Arts students.  (see lectures )