School of Design Undergraduate Summer Lab 2023!

On 25 April, 2023, the School of Design held its first Undergraduate Student Summer Lab!

The aim of the Summer Lab was to bring our second-year cohort of Design students together to learn more about how to develop their personal and professional design portfolios. We also talked about the importance of developing their own identities as designers.

Through a series of short presentations, activities and lots of snacks (!), our students were able to really interrogate the work they had been producing for module assignments as well as work outside of the classroom. And in talking about design identities, students had time to reflect on why they fell in love with design, where they are now and what they would like to do next, whether that was in their final year of studies or after graduating.

One student remarked:

We got really targeted, in-depth advice about our design portfolios and the tasks were really useful in making us think more about the kind of designers we wanted to be. All of the staff were really helpful and lovely and made sure we felt comfortable the whole time, and shared anecdotes about their own experiences within design to show the different pathways we could take, which was really useful.

We are already planning next year’s Summer Lab and are really looking forward to helping our next cohort of students develop as designers!