Make It Make Sense

71 graduation projects from 28 universities, an exhibition design consistently focused on reuse, and a program at the intersection of higher education, culture, and business: MAKE IT MAKE SENSE explores how design changes when its scope extends beyond form and function.

From October 16 to November 29, 2026, German Design Graduates will present MAKE IT MAKE SENSE in cooperation with the Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum in Munich. Seventy-one graduation projects were selected from more than 480 submissions by this year’s graduating class. They span product and industrial design, communication and digital design, as well as textile and fashion design.

Today, design operates within a significantly broader field. Material choices touch on resource issues; digital systems alter authorship and agency; interfaces organize access; and infrastructures shape behavior. Design thus no longer concerns itself solely with the quality of individual objects but increasingly with the conditions under which social and economic processes take place. This expansion is also transforming design education. Universities are becoming places where new methods, roles, and responsibilities can be tested before they become entrenched in established markets and routines. Theses are therefore more than just the culmination of a degree program. They can reveal early on which questions a discipline is beginning to ask anew.

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE addresses precisely this point. The term, which originates from internet culture, refers to the moment when familiar explanations no longer hold and connections must be reestablished. For design, this translates into an approach: not to reduce complexity, but to make it legible; not only to design solutions, but also to examine the conditions from which problems arise in the first place.

3 Projects from DesignPF

DesignPF is represented in this year’s selection of German Design Graduates with threethesis projects. The selected projects offer different perspectives on how the scope of design is currently expanding:

• Konstantin Sorge – “Nexus – An Urban Interface”

Electrification changes more than just the powertrain. The bus depot is reinterpreted as an urban hub where energy, operations, public space, and community interlock. Infrastructure steps out of the background and becomes a tangible social space for the mobility transition.

• Alexander Sauther – “I Can’t Tell You How Much My Heart Burns – Accessories Against the Erasure of Trans* Identity in German Fascism”

Documents, photographs, and letters about Gerd Katter serve as the basis for a documentary theater piece about his transition from 1926 to 1929. Accessories, props, and Van Dyke Brown prints transform biographical traces from the archive into a spatially tangible form of remembrance.

• Emily Schock– “VENTO Plus—Breathing Without Compromise”

Protective gear for welding combines respiratory protection, freedom of movement, and comfort. Filtered air keeps welding fumes out of the breathing zone, a vest distributes the weight of the equipment, and a flip-up visor makes it easier to switch between welding and grinding.

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE is curated by Katrin Krupka and Leonie Zebe in collaboration with an internal committee of the German Design Council. In addition, Prof. Dr. Angelika Nollert, Dr. Caroline Fuchs, Dr. Xenia Riemann-Tyroller, and Dr. Josef Straßer from the Neue Sammlung each select a personal highlight from among the 71 exhibits. These four selections complement the overall exhibition with diverse museum perspectives and highlight works whose themes extend beyond their immediate context of creation

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
Annual Exhibition German Design Graduates 2026

Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
October 16 through November 29, 2026