Communication and Multimedia Design (CMD) in Amsterdam offers you the chance to improve your skills as a designer, whilst enjoying one of the most vibrant cities in the world! Become a better designer by opting for one of our five international one-semester minors.
Immersive Environments, Speculative Design, User Experience Design, Makers Lab and EdTech for global cross-cultural design are the international minors we offer in our second (spring) semester. These programs are open to both CMD students, students from our international partners and so called ‘free movers’. All minors will start in February and finish in July. Most minors offer a hybrid / blended programme: a combination between online and face-to-face courses. The minor in EdTech for global cross-cultural design is 100% online. You can find more information on these minors on this page. CMD is part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. We also have more information (practical matters, tuition fees) on the general CMD university page.
In a world where technology is changing at a fast pace, designers need to keep up with the times. The physical world offers opportunities to create new immersive experiences, past the borders of interactive mobile or desktop interaction. In creating smart physical spaces, we can tell stories encompassing all senses using all kinds of technologies. These could be interactive spaces in musea, shops, festivals, events, trade shows, conferences or outdoor locations.
Speculative design (SD) is a form of critical design that examines possible futures. While some regard forecasting the future as a pointless activity, for the practice of SD it gives us a way to look at the world as it is today and use design to help us think about the world we want to see in the future. SD uses elements from design thinking, design practice, strategy, trend analysis and future scenario planning, to design and make artefacts that provoke and facilitate discussions about what sort of future we would prefer (so-called provocatypes).
The program User Experience Design aims to help you design web and mobile interfaces: interfaces that provide a good user experience and make a positive contribution to the user’s experience of the organization that provides their products / services through the interface.
Design thinking and doing is an approach that involves using designers and/or designerly ways of thinking and doing to develop solutions that allow organizations to deal with an uncertain future in a sustainable way. Rather than just being used to design new products or ways of communicating with customers, organizations use designerly approaches to help them navigate through and succeed in a complex and rapidly changing world.
Are you curious, creative and critical? Join us for a semester of interdisciplinary making, experiments, hacking, crafting, digital fabrication, bioplastics and electronics in semester 2 (Feb-July). The course provides an intense training in digital fabrication (tools and techniques like laser cutting, 3D printing, bioplastics production and electronics), and an introduction into making-as-research. What can be known through making, breaking and modifying things? What might we find out about societal values and assumptions around tools and technology by doing so? How does a tool impact what and how you create?
Today’s big challenges, as defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as climate change, energy transition or refugee problems, cut across cultural and national borders. These challenges ahead of us are so complex that no single discipline, mindset, or expertise will be able to solve them. Problems only dissolve when we work together, find ways to learn from each other’s insights and perspectives, and create synergy between people who think and act differently.
In this minor you will learn how to design across cultures and contexts for global impact, using existing digital tools and spaces in new and creative ways.
• How to develop an effective pedagogy for online group work?
• How to prototype, undertake user research and co-create online?
• How to navigate cultural differences in an online environment?
• And how do you use online tools and spaces to create a meaningful conversation about complex issues to build trust?
CMD is part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). We are based in The Netherlands, in the city of Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a cosmopolitan city where 175 different nationalities live and work together and where the English language is largely spoken. The city is a hotbed of education and research in all conceivable areas: culture and society, trade, logistics, aviation, shipping, ICT, sport, healthcare, education and much more. And Amsterdam is a great place to live!