Subject-specific fundamentals

The basic principles of design represent a topography of design tools and their phenomena. They include concepts and media that students can use as a basis for their own independent, creative design work, teach open-ended working methods, and offer perspectives for the design process. Through material experiments and targeted exercises, first-year students gain experience in design work: they learn practical techniques with which they can quickly visualize and test their ideas and processes. And they develop a feel for working with materials and form. Basic design theory provides inspiration, criteria, and the ability to evaluate creative thinking and action. First-year students receive an assessment of their creative quality and can discover and test personal working methods.

The basic course serves to teach initial creative means of expression. These are addressed successively in the basic design course, based on experience and using different methods. In industrial design, this takes place in the transition from two to three dimensions and in the recurring cycle between creative activity and reflection. Students develop a feel for plasticity, size, proportion, surface, and constructive relationships in real objects. The goal of basic design theory is to enable students to quickly visualize and communicate their own thoughts in the form of two- and three-dimensional sketches and to develop a vocabulary that allows them to comment on their own design work and that of others. Students learn to argue and describe design qualities independently of functional or context-oriented criteria. They gain a fundamental understanding of design practice and the basic tools for three-dimensional design. They learn that there is no right or wrong in design, but that there are many paths to design and that the most exciting thing is to find your own.