The School of Design in Pforzheim – DesignPF – is a vibrant institution with both, a strong vision for speculative futures and future making and deep historical roots in craft and industrialisation. Founded in 1877 as Ducal School of Craft, it started as an ‘educational laboratory’ of crafts, industrialized production and trade. Being devoted to creativity, experimentation and excellence, throughout the decades the School of Design established new educational components with a solid base on the principles of “Bauhaus” and “Ulmer Schule”.

Today DesignPF offers 6 Bachelor and 3 Master programs in Design: from Fashion, Jewellery and Accessory to Transportation Design and Media. The highly diverse range of award-winning design programs are recognized for highly skilled graduates with unique profiles, sensibilities and ingenuity in their professional practice.

The Design PF education provides a transferable and holistically formed expertise. A unique range of art-related core classes are offered to all students challenging their creative minds and fostering a design engagement of intellectual, experimental and tacit rigor. Inter- and trans-disciplinary ventures, collaborative projects, crossover activities foster critical, research-focused, innovation-led processes, strategies and global design approaches. 
By applying conceptual design thinking methods as well as experimental knowledge, students are trained to think holistically, to act critically and to collaborate interdependently.
This will be delivered to management through remarkable social skills, versatility, and professionalized communication tools as well as through the capacity to connect at speed.
Inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations with both international institutes and design-studios as well as with recognized industry partners will provide a critical, blending insight. This will evoke disruptive design investigations embracing new technologies as well as environmental and social challenges.
 

Some short facts about the School of Design:

• 6 Bachelor and 3 Master programs in Design
• one of the oldest and well-known Schools for Design in Germany
• founded 1877 as Ducal School of Craft at the behest of the jewellery industry that wished to encourage Higher Education
• since 2005 School of Design at Pforzheim University (public university – no tuition fees for EU-students)
• is fully accredited and continuously evaluated by the state Baden-Wuerttemberg and ZEvA Hannover
• since 2004 member of CUMULUS International Association of Art and Design Colleges