Industrial Design Schools: Opinions and Questions

Agreed :wink:

Thank you very much to all of you for your input and advice

Hi all!

I’m a student from India and would really appreciate some advice.

I did my undergraduation from a design college here about a year ago. Since then I’ve been working on low cost medical products in rural india. I’ve applied to a few schools in the US for a masters and really need some help picking.

I’ve gotten into

  1. University of Cincinnati
  2. Arizona State university
  3. UIUC
  4. Pratt Institute
  5. California College of Design

I’m also on the waitlist at RISD.

I’ve been considering going to a university and not an art school because I love multidisciplinary work. This narrows my options down to UIUC, UIC and ASU.

UIUC has offered me a TA which give me a full tuition fee waiver and a stipend which is a really sweet deal. (To attend anywhere else, I will be in a ton of debt; something I would rather avoid. )

So here’s my dilemma. Everything I can find on the forum about UIUC is a bit dated. The latest comments were from acm who did his undergrad in 2012.

My questions to anybody who have heard about the program to anybody who recently/seen portfolios/interacted with recent students:

  1. are the portfolios competitive?
  2. and consistent pattern in terms of skills the students seem to be lacking; straight out of college?
  3. any reasons for not attending UIUC and joining one of the other colleges?

I’m a bit hesitant about UIUC largely because I haven’t been able to find a lot of portfolios on behance or on the www.
I want to attend college largely for exposure to an international audience, and to polish my skill set; something there is dire need of.

Visiting the universities is not really feasible at this point so I have to make do with what I can find online.

Thanks in advance and apologies for such a long post.

Hi all!

I’m a student from India and would really appreciate some advice.

I did my undergraduation from a design college here about a year ago. Since then I’ve been working on low cost medical products in rural india. I’ve applied to a few schools in the US for a masters and really need some help picking.

I’ve gotten into

  1. University of Cincinnati
  2. Arizona State university
  3. UIUC
  4. Pratt Institute
  5. California College of Design

I’m also on the waitlist at RISD.

I’ve been considering going to a university and not an art school because I love multidisciplinary work. This narrows my options down to UIUC, UIC and ASU.

UIUC has offered me a TA which give me a full tuition fee waiver and a stipend which is a really sweet deal. (To attend anywhere else, I will be in a ton of debt; something I would rather avoid. )

So here’s my dilemma. Everything I can find on the forum about UIUC is a bit dated. The latest comments were from acm who did his undergrad in 2012.

My questions to anybody who have heard about the program to anybody who recently/seen portfolios/interacted with recent students:

  1. are the portfolios competitive?
  2. and consistent pattern in terms of skills the students seem to be lacking; straight out of college?
  3. any reasons for not attending UIUC and joining one of the other colleges?

I’m a bit hesitant about UIUC largely because I haven’t been able to find a lot of portfolios on behance or on the www.
I want to attend college largely for exposure to an international audience, and to polish my skill set; something there is dire need of.

Visiting the universities is not really feasible at this point so I have to make do with what I can find online.

Thanks in advance and apologies for such a long post.

Hi all!

I’m a student from India and would really appreciate some advice.

I did my undergraduation from a design college here about a year ago. Since then I’ve been working on low cost medical products in rural india. I’ve applied to a few schools in the US for a masters and really need some help picking.

I’ve gotten into

  1. University of Cincinnati
  2. Arizona State university
  3. UIUC
  4. Pratt Institute
  5. California College of Design

I’m also on the waitlist at RISD.

I’ve been considering going to a university and not an art school because I love multidisciplinary work. This narrows my options down to UIUC, UIC and ASU.

UIUC has offered me a TA which give me a full tuition fee waiver and a stipend which is a really sweet deal. (To attend anywhere else, I will be in a ton of debt; something I would rather avoid. )

So here’s my dilemma. Everything I can find on the forum about UIUC is a bit dated. The latest comments were from acm who did his undergrad in 2012.

My questions to anybody who have heard about the program to anybody who recently/seen portfolios/interacted with recent students:

  1. are the portfolios competitive?
  2. and consistent pattern in terms of skills the students seem to be lacking; straight out of college?
  3. any reasons for not attending UIUC and joining one of the other colleges?

I’m a bit hesitant about UIUC largely because I haven’t been able to find a lot of portfolios on behance or on the www.
I want to attend college largely for exposure to an international audience, and to polish my skill set; something there is dire need of.

Visiting the universities is not really feasible at this point so I have to make do with what I can find online.

Thanks in advance and apologies for such a long post.

To me, it seems like it’s a 1/4 way between a technical school and a design school. There is a huge focus on 3D, judging from their poorly designed web page.

I just see it being name-dropped all over the place, but I’m not finding anyone who’s attended or who can comment.

Thanks

Greetings everyone!

I’m a Mechanical Engineering undergrad from India looking to do my graduate studies in Industrial Design. I have received 2 admits for intake this Fall and wanted to know what opinion you guys have about the following Masters programs:

  1. Georgia Tech MID
  2. North Carolina State University (NCSU) MID

I will be coming with 6 months of experience from a design consultancy, so would be looking forward to a programs which would set a strong base of skills for me. I would be keen on a program which helps me be a broad, well-rounded designer strong at designing functional, user-centric products.

I have heard good things about both programs, but seemingly the course at NCSU is stronger.
Also, I see most graduates coming out of Georgia Tech on LinkedIn working in UI/UX. (Something I don’t want to restrict myself to)
Please let me know what you think about the above points.

Thank you for your help
Regards
Raunak Mahtani
raunakmahtani@gmail.com

I need some help if anyone knows something about these art schools and these masters programmes:

Köln International School of Design (KISD) (M.Sc. Integrated design)
Politecnico di Milano (M.Sc. Product-Service-System Design OR Design and Engineering)
Sapienza University of Rome (M.Sc. Product design)

Thanks

All I know is that at my university (Eindhoven the Netherlands) there occassionally were exchange master students from Politecnico di Milano and they were all very good. From what I have seen their program is focused mostly towards the traditional design industry (user research, sketching, 3D modeling, focus on sustainability etc).

But do you know exactly what their programme was? As their Industrial design Master is only taught in Italian, and I don’t speak Italian. So I found two other programs there that might be related which are the “Product service system design” and " design and engineering". Do you know anything about these programmes or anyone who had taken them?

It is an enormous advantage if you can speak Italian, especially in Northern Italy.
I don’t know the specifics of the program, you can post questions through their website or Facebook page: Politecnico di Milano
They just had an open day for the Master’s so there are probably people to answer your question there.

Given the language barrier I would go for KISD out of those three. It is quite German in approach non-surprisingly so you will have to be aware to develop your own designer profile. Cologne is a great city and with public transport you can visit a lot of places. Job prospects will be good with Germany being one of the biggest economies.

Have you considered the program of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands?
Their approach to design is very innovative and the program is fully in English with a very international teacher staff.
https://www.tue.nl/en/university/departments/industrial-design/education/industrial-design-graduate-programs/industrial-design/

does anyone have recommendations for a master programme in industrial design in europe?

what do you think about TU Delft for example? Integrated Product design and strategic product design

or is the programme there similar to the master programmes of Schwäbisch Gmünd or Cologne in Germany?

Delft is good and you have a nice studying environment near the large cities. It is very innovation- and business-oriented and generates lots of startups.

Eindhoven is more down-south and is more aimed at far-future high-tech innovations developed for specific target groups.
It gets less media exposure than Delft but has been internationally recognized as one of the best programs.
Especially if you want a lot of space to develop your own projects and be inspired this is a great program.

Hello, im a senior going to graduate in 2017.
Currently im having a little trouble deciding on a university to study Industrial design in.
Some of my options are Griffith university(Australia) and Brunel (uk . Are their programs any good?

Brunel, in my opinion, is a weird one. If you want to study in the UK then I would say Loughborough is the best option, after that… I dunno. A lot of unis here are very pretentious with the names of the degrees they give out, the module titles and even the wording of the module specifications.
NCAD in Ireland (Dublin) looks really good too and is a proper city, not like Loughborough.

Thanks for the reply! Ill be sure to check them out.

I’ll throw my hat in the ring.

I graduate from Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI in two months, and I think this school deserves a lot more credit than it’s given. It was founded by a furniture designer in the 1920’s and still has one of the top furniture design programs in the US. For those unfamiliar with Grand Rapids, it used to be the furniture capital of the world and still is headquarters to companies such as Steelcase, Haworth, Herman Miller, and several others. In fact, most of the ID faculty worked together at Herman Miller back when they had an in-house team.

Grand Rapids is consistently listed as an up and coming city and the design, medical, and interestingly, entrepreneurial scenes are buzzing right now. It’s an exciting time to be in GR!

As for my time at Kendall, I’ve had a diverse education in all of the usual industrial design skills of ergonomics, human-centered design, 3D modeling, rapid visualization, rendering, cmf, etc. Our program also focuses on start-ups and entrepreneurial design which is something most schools don’t offer. In addition, KCAD as we call it, has a great relationship with the companies all around West MI and I believe our job placement rate is something like 90% or more of the graduates each year have an ID job sixth months or less after they graduate.

If you’ve ever worked in or around West MI you know at least a few KCAD graduates or interns at companies such as Steelcase, Newell Brands, Wolverine Worldwide, Bissell, Stryker, and Whirlpool. Furthermore, there’s a handful of contract design studios around the area that regularly take KCAD interns during the summer and school year.

Some of the bigger name studios outside West Mi that KCAD alumni work for are Frog, Teague, and Ideo.

The tuition is only about $20K a year because we are technically part of a state school which is nice and KCAD offers a really great education at half the price of some of the schools that have been mentioned already.

If you’re interested in footwear, furniture, consumer products, medical equipment, packaging, consumer electronics, power tools or hand tools KCAD is the place for you. If you’re looking for a career in toys, transportation or automobiles there are probably schools with better connections and curriculums for you to explore. Hope that helps!

I am an Indian student keen on building a career in ID and will be travelling on a student visa. I have admission to the ID course in University of Illinois, Urbana and Champaign as well as Purdue University in the US. I also have admission to Emily Carr, OCADU and Carleton University as well.

The first decision is which country - US (does ID qualify as a STEM course, this is important due to the new visa rules in the US as I want to get some experience after my degree). Canada I know gives me a 3 year work permit the moment I complete my under grad program. Cost wise too Canada is much cheaper than the US - USD 45,000 versus CAD 35,000. So in a sense cost and visa rules are in favour of Canada.

However, the moment I look at brand, facilities and global recognition (at least here in India) the US universities are far better known and I assume will lead to far better professional outcomes.

So the question I have is should I go to the US colleges and if so to which one? and if i should go to Canada, which one? I am more keen to look at a more hands on approach to design rather than a pure theoretical approach.

I need to take this decision in the next 15 days so please help.

My son and I recently compared several industrial design undergraduate schools. This site was extremely helpful in researching the schools. My son is a high school senior interested in product design, not transportation. He would like to explore furniture design, photography, fine arts and maybe UX / UI. Here’s a summary of our findings. Many of the comments here have been previously stated by others and confirmed by me.

He applied , visited, and was accepted to : CMU, U of Cincinnati, Pratt, RISD, RIT. The facilities such as the woodshops, studios, model shops looked good at all the schools.

CMU
Pros- Graduates are getting very high paying jobs mostly in the field of UX/UI. Flexible program that allows students to explore product, communications and environment paths within the design department. Small program with a total of about 40 design students (including communication & environment design too) . Strong computing and engineering programs allow students to minor in human computer interface. Opportunities to take fine arts classes. Majority of students get summer internships junior and senior year.
Cons- Student portfolios and design studios show little evidence of high level physical consumer product design.

UC
Pros- Outstanding student portfolios showing high level product design, model making and manufacturing skills. Extensive co-op opportunities in the US , Europe, Asia. Students are well prepared with marketable skills and work experience.
Cons- UX/UI opportunities are in Communications Design major. Not sure if it’s available for ID majors. My son prefers a smaller school. Largest school of the group. It is also the furthest from our home in upstate NY.

Pratt
Pros- My son liked the art focus of the student work. Well presented displays of student work. Proximity to NYC for culture and internships. Faculty consists mostly of working designers.
Cons- My sons interaction with the school administration was not good. Campus tour dates were very restricted, tours left out a view of the dorms, faculty presentations were not well organized, follow up by the admissions staff was poor. These administrative missteps eventually changed my son’s opinion of the school.

RISD
Pros - Outstanding student portfolios with artistic focus. Opportunities to take fine arts classes and academic classes at Brown. Focuses on traditional skill and aspects of ID.
Cons- Tour of the ID department was weak so we didn’t get too many details. Very high cost and no merit scholarships eventually took this school off our list.

RIT
Pros- Well presented displays of student work. Lots of evidence of high quality product design. Strong photography program and large variety of academic selections.
Cons- UX/UI opportunities are in another major. Not sure if it’s available for ID majors. Co-op isn’t mandatory and not as well established as UC’s.

Son’s Choice
After many months of visiting, applying, researching the schools, he chose to attend UC. When we started this process we knew very little about UC. The more we learned about it the better it looked. UC is also the lowest cost school of the group. I think he made the right choice!

I think UC is the right choice. They do a big chair project every year and the curriculum is very balanced. It doesn’t have the fine arts bent but I think you have to make choices. Many time UX/UI and furniture are in different programs, and for good reasons. The skill sets are completely different and the types of designers they attract tend to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. UC is a rare one that is a little more blended, likely due to being a university. Going a little farther from home is a good thing. I grew up in the Hudson Valley and went to RISD, but I could have used going a little farther from home.