About Design Management - MA in Birmingham City University

This course invites designers and non-designers to apply design thinking and business-speak to create innovative and purposeful outcomes. On this course, you sharpen your strategic edge through expanding your entrepreneurial and business capabilities. If you are a non-designer, you learn to be a creative thinker.

You bring the knowledge from your past education and practice, combine them with the subject knowledge of design management, and create solutions that are not just aesthetically pleasing but also functional, viable, and purposeful. The course brings excellent networking opportunities for you to facilitate knowledge building and collaborative learning.

On this postgraduate course, we teach you the interdisciplinary issues that design managers work with, such as business, marketing, technology, and art. Immersed in practice, you acquire the skills and the confidence to manage and lead a project. You are encouraged to push the boundaries and to put forward new, improved ideas that are innovative and purposeful.

Design thinking, design strategy, creativity, research, and problem solving are applied extensively to all the modules. You undertake projects individually and in a team, where you learn communication, management, and interpersonal skills. You work with industry partners with the utmost professionalism. You pursue an industry-based inquiry, which may be a placement. And, you acquire and apply people management, client management, and project management tactics while working on industry projects and teams.

You’ll learn from our team of commercially active staff, who ensure the content stays industry relevant. Alongside the opportunity to complete a six-week placement option, you will have the chance to work on commercial projects with established businesses. Previous projects have included working on a brand review with GKN, a FTSE 100 British multinational company specialising in aerospace.

Tailor the programme to suit you. The curriculum has a distinctive professional focus and embraces business management, marketing, design strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainability, design leadership and design practice.

Your focus will also include project management, intellectual property law and finance. There is also a strong emphasis on the development of evidence-based decision making, high level leadership and communication skills.

Academic qualification equivalents

• Bachelors degree - (Pass) in a related subject

English language requirements (one of the below):

• An IELTS score of 7.0
• A TOEFL score of at least 600 (paper-based test) / 100 (internet-based test) / 250 (computer-based test)
• PTE score 50-58

Birmingham City University Highlights

Birmingham City University Average Tuition fees and Other Expenses

This figure is an estimate of the basic living costs during the first nine months of studies, which covers most expenses including average tuition fees.